Pedagogy Forum week 7

My students have finished their first skits so rather than writing about classroom poetry I will give you an instructive conversation I had with my nephew via Facebook.
My nephew is in high school and writes songs for his garage band. The band is quite popular in his home town. after a few conversations about poetry writing techniques
my Nephew wrote:

"Try this song I wrote a little bit back, tell me how you see it:"

And as we waited, all breath was bated,
The agony of waiting was too much.
She was in the corner, where I couldn't warn her,
But by then it was too late anyway.

The chase was on, the longing now gone,
Replaced by only madness so sincere.
And so I ran, in fear of a man,
Who's woman shed only one tear

[Chorus]
Stalk on, stare on,
All is not lost,
You'd sell your soul, were it the cost.
Love on, dream on,
Only time will tell,
If I have stumbled, or if I fell.

Forgetting all cares, worries and strife,
We departed to find the lost city.
Amongst all the chaos, held at point of knife,
All dreams were lost, what a pity.

I watched a man pound away at the keys,
And take all of my worries far away.
But he lived a life of only sadness,
So buy one more Guinness, if you please.

Here is what I asked him to do with it.
Michael work on this a little look at these two images
"Replaced by only madness so sincere"
This is a very fresh image, people do not say this often, when writing good poetry or songs you always want to strive for a fresh way of saying/writing things.

The calm was before the storm
This image is not as fresh, the calm before the storm has been said a thousand times, so what you want to do with an image like this, which is trite (that means overused) is to give it a fresh take with creative erasure. for example

the _____was before the _________
the hush was before the blast or
soothing before the tempest

you of course can come up with far better words that work in your own song by using an online thesaurus and deleting parts of the phrase that are trite. However better than a thesaurus is to write about a half a page of free association, in class we call this your junkyard, and draw from that.

My nephew and I then worked on some junkyard language, and looked at some song lyrics he liked and dislike to find fresh language.

Then I gave him a triggering subject.

Ok, lets take something you have never experienced. A brain tumor that is pretty intense and dark (he likes dark material, of course, he is in high school) let's color your lyrics with that. let's also change the name chase to something more effeminate with the same quality so that you can shape it without feeling strange writing about a boy as your subject.


Please Chaste, I only ran away
from you, my madness, stumbles time

Please chaste, I only ran away
fear me, another place and time

Brain tumor-she's inside me like a
Brain tumor-she's inside me like a
brain tumor- she went through me and I'm gone

Fear a man, who's only woman shed him.
stare on, at men who pound the keys,

Fear a man, who lost the cities worries
Fear a man, who could not find his keys

Brain tumor-she's inside me like a
Brain tumor-she's inside me like a
brain tumor- she went through me and I'm gone


now there you go, if you can't work with that you can always change it by giving it some other triggering subject.
Notice that every word is yours, except for the idea of a brain tumor, which you could easily replace with some other triggering subject.

What does all this mean? Well it now means whatever you want it to, but the great thing is since we have deffered meaning for a while. It now might mean whatever it's audience wants it to. you no longer have all the ownership in the lyrics, so people will be more likely to listen to it.

How do you do this in the future, well you need to stop writing your lyrics first to fit the music. You need to write out a ton of fresh prose as fast as you can and let it spill onto paper and then you will have a junkyard of language to use later.

Remember this rule, it is much easier to be a good re-writer than a good writer.
Last, remember that idea needs to take a backseat to language if you want to write something fresh.

His response was positive except the deferring of idea, this is something he probably is just not ready to let go of yet, but he wanted to keep the lyrics. I hope it helps him. By critically examining his very confessional lyrics I also learned exactly why my own confessional poetry work, just doesn't work.