Poetry Exercise #4: Kaddish

Here's a link to the poem.

Allen Ginsberg's "Kaddish" has the loss of his mother at its center. Write a poem that focuses on the loss of someone or something. The central loss might remind you of other people, places, things that you have lost. Jaclyn W. pointed out that the speaker of the poem reminisces about lots of specific details from the past. We get the names of people, the names of places, vivid descriptions. Try to include lots of very particular memories of who and/or what is no longer with you--no longer part of your material daily life. Then, explore your feelings and thoughts about your memories and about the loss. Danielle B. pointed out feelings of sadness and regret in the poem. I mentioned the sense of release that Ginsberg suggest comes with loss. Explore the feelings and thoughts even if they are complex and contradictory. As always, listen for what rhythms and words sound good together.

Poetry Exercise #3: Cloud in Trousers

by Vladimir Mayakovsky
translated by Peter Bogdanoff
 
[Part One]
 
You think malaria makes me delirious?

It happened.
In Odessa it happened.

'I'll come at four,' Maria promised.

Eight.
Nine.
Ten.

Then the evening
turned its back on the windows
and plunged into grim night,
scowling
Decemberish.

At my decrepit back
the candelabras guffawed and whinnied.

You would not recognise me now:
a bulging bulk of sinews,
groaning,
and writhing,
What can such a clod desire?
Though a clod, many things!

The self does not care
whether one is cast of bronze
or the heart has an iron lining.
At night the self only desires
to steep its clangour in softness,
in woman.

And thus,
enormous,
I stood hunched by the window,
and my brow melted the glass.
What will it be: love or no-love?
And what kind of love:
big or minute?
How could a body like this have a big love?
It should be teeny-weeny,
humble, little love;
a love that shies at the hooting of cars,
that adores the bells of horse-trams.

Again and again
nuzzling against the rain,
my face pressed against its pitted face,
I wait,
splashed by the city's thundering surf.

Then midnight, amok with a knife,
caught up,
cut him down
out with him!

The stroke of twelve fell
like a head from a block.

On the windowpanes, grey raindrops
howled together,
piling on a grimace
as though the gargoyles
of Notre Dame were howling.

Damn you!
Isn't that enough?
Screams will soon claw my mouth apart.

Then I heard,
softly,
a nerve leap
like a sick man from his bed.
Then,
barely moving,
at first,
it soon scampered about,
agitated,
distinct.
Now, with a couple more,
it darted about in a desperate dance.

The plaster on the ground floor crashed.

Nerves,
big nerves,
tiny nerves,
many nerves!
galloped madly
till soon
their legs gave way.

But night oozed and oozed through the room
and the eye, weighed down, could not slither out of
the slime.

The doors suddenly banged ta-ra-bang,
as though the hotel's teeth
chattered.

You swept in abruptly
like 'take it or leave it!'
Mauling your suede gloves,
you declared:
'D' you know,
I'm getting married.'

All right, marry then.
So what,
I can take it.
As you see, I'm calm!
Like the pulse
of a corpse.

Do you remember
how you used to talk?
'Jack London,
money,
love,
passion.'
But I saw one thing only:
you, a Gioconda,
had to be stolen!

And you were stolen.

In love, I shall gamble again,
the arch of my brows ablaze.
What of it!
Homeless tramps often find
shelter in a burnt-out house!

You're teasing me now?
'You have fewer emeralds of madness
than a beggar has kopeks!'
But remember!
When they teased Vesuvius,
Pompeii perished!

Hey!
Gentlemen!
Amateurs
of sacrilege,
crime,
and carnage,
have you seen
the terror of terrors
my face
when
I
am absolutely calm?

I feel
my 'I'
is much too small for me.
Stubbornly a body pushes out of me.

Hello!
Who's speaking?
Mamma?
Mamma!
Your son is gloriously ill!
Mamma!
His heart is on fire.
Tell his sisters, Lyuda and Olya,
he has no nook to hide in.

Each word,
each joke,
which his scorching mouth spews,
jumps like a naked prostitute
from a burning brothel.

People sniff
the smell of burnt flesh!
A brigade of men drive up.
A glittering brigade.
In bright helmets.
But no jackboots here!
Tell the firemen
to climb lovingly when a heart's on fire.
Leave it to me.
I'll pump barrels of tears from my eyes.
I'll brace myself against my ribs.
I'll leap out! Out! Out!
They've collapsed.
You can't leap out of a heart!

From the cracks of the lips
upon a smouldering face
a cinder of a kiss rises to leap.

Mamma!
I cannot sing.
In the heart's chapel the choir loft catches fire!

The scorched figurines of words and numbers
scurry from the skull
like children from a flaming building.
Thus fear,
in its effort to grasp at the sky,
lifted high
the flaming arms of the Lusitania.

Into the calm of the apartment
where people quake,
a hundred-eye blaze bursts from the docks.
Moan
into the centuries,
if you can, a last scream: I'm on fire! 

Exercise [beginning with ideas from Kenneth Koch and Kate Farrell in Sleeping on the Wing but extended by the Gloucester High students of Creative Writing]

Write a poem that begins with your anger for someone or something and allow that anger to take over the poem as if floating on a flaming stream of consciousness. Fill the poem with vivid, suggestive disturbing, upsetting, aggressive; these images might even surprise you with their fierceness and grossness. (Images of sickness and the body are often particularly effective.) In this poem you can mix long and short lines. Long lines are great for rants. Short lines can be used to pick up the pace and for turning words into punches. Use varied punctuation, including exclamation points and question marks. Keep you ear tuned to cool sounding phrases, like "cloud in trousers." 

Poetry Exercise #2: A Supermarket in California

A Supermarket in California

Allen Ginsberg, 1926 - 1997

 

  What thoughts I have of you tonight, Walt Whitman, 

        for I walked down the sidestreets under the 

        trees with a headache self-conscious looking 

        at the full moon.

  In my hungry fatigue, and shopping for images, I 

        went into the neon fruit supermarket, dreaming 

        of your enumerations!

  What peaches and what penumbras!  Whole families 

        shopping at night!  Aisles full of husbands! 

        Wives in the avocados, babies in the tomatoes!--

        and you, García Lorca, what were you doing down 

        by the watermelons?

  I saw you, Walt Whitman, childless, lonely old grubber, 

        poking among the meats in the refrigerator and 

        eyeing the grocery boys.

  I heard you asking questions of each: Who killed the 

        pork chops?  What price bananas?  Are you my Angel?

  I wandered in and out of the brilliant stacks of cans 

        following you, and followed in my imagination by 

        the store detective.

  We strode down the open corridors together in our solitary 

        fancy tasting artichokes, possessing every frozen 

        delicacy, and never passing the cashier.

  Where are we going, Walt Whitman?  The doors close in a 

        hour.  Which way does your beard point tonight?

 (I touch your book and dream of our odyssey in the 

        supermarket and feel absurd.)

  Will we walk all night through solitary streets?  The 

        trees add shade to shade, lights out in the houses, 

        we’ll both be lonely.

  Will we stroll dreaming of the lost America of love past 

        blue automobiles in driveways, home to our silent 

        cottage?

  Ah, dear father, graybeard, lonely old courage-teacher, 

        what America did you have when Charon quit poling his 

        ferry and you got out on a smoking bank and stood 

        watching the boat disappear on the black waters of Lethe?

--Berkeley, 1955

Write a poem with very long lines and lots of alliteration, assonance, and consonance but no rhyme scheme. Write the poem to someone whom you've never met but who has influenced you in some significant way. Pretend you're speaking to them while both of you are in a place that is familiar to you. Include lots of vivid, suggestive imagery. Use the person's name in the poem. Ask them questions.  

This exercise is adapted from Sleeping on the Wing, written by Kenneth Koch and Kate Farrell.

Poetry Exercise #1: This is Just to Say

"Tell all the truth but tell it slant"
         Emily Dickinson

In the following William Carlos Williams poem the speaker expresses the truth that we often enjoy things for which we are later compelled to apologize. A complexity of human emotion is that the enjoyment can be sincere and the apology can be sincere despite seeming to contradict each other. Here WCW gets at this complexity not by directly stating it but through a deceptively simple apology note. In other words he finds a "slant" way to tell the "truth."
(This exercise is adapted from Kenneth Koch's Rose, Where Did You Get That Red.)

This Is Just To Say
by William Carlos Williams

I have eaten 
the plums 
that were in 
the icebox 

and which 
you were probably 
saving 
for breakfast 

Forgive me 
they were delicious 
so sweet 
and so cold

Exercise #1: Write an apology in the form of an unrhymed poem. You (or a fictional speaker) are apologizing even though you are either not entirely sorry or not just sorry but also in some way still pleased with what you did. Write the poem in very short lines (three words or so at most). Use plain and precise language; plums, icebox, breakfast, delicious, sweet, and cold are all precise words in WCW's poem. You might also experiment with line breaks and stanzas. Williams often breaks lines in the middle of phrases and clauses--"in/the icebok" "and which/you were probably/saving..."--but then in the last stanza each each line break comes at the end of a complete phrase. Finally, you might also want to avoid using punctuation especially if it isn't needed.

Poetry Genre Study: What is Poetry anyway?

What is Poetry anyway?

A Mosaic of Responses

Read the following passages about poetry. Pick three comments you agree with strongly, two you disagree with, and one that you're not sure about. Tell me a little bit about your choices.

 

1. Ezra Pound, early twentieth century USAmerican poet

Here’s my paraphrase of what Ez sez:

It’s useful to think about all poetry as having three aspects though some poems emphasize one aspect more so than others:

Phanopoeia = description = the poem throws images on the mind

Melopoeia = musicality = the poem’s sounds & rhythms evoke emotional correlations

Logopoeia = mindfulness = the poem stimulates thought (and feeling) in relation to the poem’s words & word groups

2. W’ei T’ai, 11^th century Chinese poet

Whaddya say W’ei?

“Poetry presents the thing in order to convey the feeling. It should be precise about the thing and reticent about the feeling, for as soon as the mind responds and connects with the thing the feeling shows in the words.

“This is how poetry enters deeply into us. If the poet presents directly feelings which overwhelm him and keeps nothing back to linger as an aftertaste, he stirs us superficially; he cannot start the hands and feet involuntarily waving and tapping in time, far less strengthen morality and refine culture, set heaven and earth in motion and call up the spirits.”

3. Louis Zukofsky, twentieth century US American poet

What’s the news, Lou?

“I'll tell you. / About my poetics— / music / speech / An integral / Lower limit speech / Upper limit music.”

(from “A12” a poem)

Like this:

     Music

     Speech

4. In a poem called “City Midnight Junk Strains” Allen Ginsberg, twentieth century USAmerican poet, says that Frank O’Hara, another twentieth century USAmerican poet, has a “a common ear for our deep gossip.”

In a book called Quote Poet Unquote someone named Liam Rector is credited with the statement “Poetry is deep gossip.” Sadly neither Ginsberg nor O’Hara is mentioned by Rector or the book’s editor, Dennis O’Driscoll.

Here are several more statements about what poetry is from Quote Poet Unquote book:

5. DAVID GASCOYNE, Stand, Spring 1992

Poetry is like a substance, the words stick together as though they were magnetized to each other.

6. SEAMUS HEANEY, Sunday Independent, 25 September 1994

Poetry is language in orbit.

7. YVES BONNEFOY, Times Literary Supplement, 12 August 2005

Poetry is an act by which the relation of words to reality is renewed.

8. MARK DOTY, The Cortland Review, October 2000

Poetry is an investigation, not an expression, of what you know.

9. LEONARD COHEN, The Sunday Times

Poetry is a verdict that others give to language that is charged with music and rhythm and authority.

10. UMBERTO ECO, The Independent, 6 October 1995

Poetry is not a matter of feelings, it is a matter of language. It is language which creates feelings.

11. CHRISTOPHER MIDDLETON, PN Review, March-April 1993

Poetry is language wrought by feeling and imagination to such a pitch that it enacts and embodies the thing it says.

12. DAVE SMITH, Local Assays, 1985

Poetry is a dialect of the language we speak, possessed of metaphorical density, coded with resonant meaning, engaging us with narrative's pleasures, enhancing and sustaining our pleasure with enlarged awareness.

13. JOSEPH BRODSKY, The New Yorker, 26 September 1994

Poetry is a dame with a huge pedigree, and every word comes practically barnacled with allusions and associations.

14. CAL BEDIENT, Denver Quarterly 39, no. 2, 2004

Poetry is the eroticization of thought—psychic vitality.

15. MATTHEW HOLLIS, Poetry Book Society Bulletin, Spring 2004

Poetry is... a kind of leaving of notes for another to find, and a willingness to have them fall into the wrong hands.

16. CHARLES WRIGHT, Quarter Notes, 1995

Poetry is language that sounds better and means more.

17. ANNE ROUSE, The Sunday Times, 28 January 2001

Poetry is about the intensity at the centre of life, and about intricacy of expression. Without any appreciation of those, people are condemned to simplistic emotions and crude expressions.

18. FRIEDA HUGHES, The Guardian, 3 October 2001

Poetry is a way of communicating a vast array of thoughts and feelings by concentrating them into minimal, or even single, points which describe the whole.

19. JOHN SIMON, Dreamers of Dreams, 2001

Poetry is the meeting point of parallel lines—in infinity, but also in the here and now. It is where the patent and incontrovertible intersects with the ineffable and incommensurable.

20. DON McKAY, The Toronto Star, 4 June 2007

Poetry is language pointing beyond its own capacities.

21. HAROLD BLOOM, The Art of Reading Poetry, 2006

Poetry essentially is figurative language, concentrated so that its form is both expressive and evocative.

22. PETER FALLON, The Poetry Paper, no. 3, 2006

A poem is words at work, on us and for us.

23. ÁGNES NEMES NAGY, A Hungarian Perspective, 1998

A poem is partly grace, partly discovery, and partly a struggle to squeeze out a little bit more, to conquer another foot of territory from the unconscious.

24. P.J. KAVANAGH, BBC Radio 3, December 1990

A poem is an attempt to find the music in the words describing an intuition.

25. NUALA NÍ DHOMHNAILL, RTÉ I television, July 1995

A poem is a smuggling of something back from the otherworld, a prime bit of shoplifting where you get something out the door before the buzzer goes off.

26. WILLIAM H. GASS, The Georgia Review, Spring 2004

A poem is like a ghost seeking substantiality, a soul in search of body more appealing than the bare bones mere verses rattle.

27. CAROL ANN DUFFY, Out of Fashion, 2004

A poem... is the attire of feeling: the literary form where words seem tailor-made for memory or desire.

28. JAMIE McKENDRICK, The South Bank Show, October 1994

Every poem is an answer to the question what poetry is for.

29. After I thought I’d finished this collection I found this statement from Audre Lorde’s Power, Oppression and the Politics of Culture: a lesbian/feminist perspective:

“For women, then, poetry is not a luxury. It is a vital necessity of our existence. It forms the quality of the light within which we predicate our hopes and dreams toward survival and change, first made into language, then into idea, then into more tangible action.”

30. &, finally, this statement on poetry by Paul Celan* is part of my friend Pierre Joris’s email signature:

“The poem is the detour from you

to you; it is the route. It is also the

route of language toward itself, 

its becoming visible and 

mortal: wherewith the poem 

becomes the raison d’être of language.”

Celan was a German-speaking Jew in Eastern Europe. He survived World War II. His town in a place called Burkovina that was then Romanian and now Ukrainian was first occupied by the Soviets and later by the Nazis. He spent much of the war in Nazi-run labor camp. His parents were handed over to the Germans and killed.

Fiction Revision and Reflection

Reflecting on Fiction Final Drafts

1. Make sure you've shared your "Fiction Final Draft" Google document with me at jcook@gloucesterschools.com

2. At the end of your fiction write the word "Reflection". Then, write our your revision process: everything you did with your story from the day of your workshop until you finished revising your story. Be specific.

3. Then, do some metacognition. Think about your thinking. Why did you make the decisions you did? What helped? What didn't help? What are you still unsure about?

All of the above is due Wednesday, September 24 for people who had a workshop last week and Thursday, September 25 for people who had a workshop this week.
 
4. Read the fiction writing advice found here. Pick three comments you agree with strongly, two you disagree with, and one that you're not sure about. Tell me a little bit about your choices.

#4 is due by Thursday, September 25 for everyone.

Fiction Draft-to-Workshop and Reflection

In a separate document, revise one of the exercises to share with the class. Title this document "Fiction Workshop".

In a separate document, reflect on the process by answering the questions below. Title this document "Fiction Reflection".

1. Reflect on which exercises worked well for you. Be specific. Give details. Think about why they worked.
2. Reflect on which exercises did not work as well for you. Be specific. Give details. Think about why they didn't work.
3. Reflect on the story you've revised and shared. What do you like about it? What needs work? What would you like feedback on?
Share your reflections with me in paper or electronic (Google Doc) form.

Fiction Exercises #4 and #5

Fiction Exercise #4: "Ghost Children of Tacoma" by Richard Brautigan and "Murder in the Dark" by Margaret Atwood

Write a story that includes a childhood game (or imaginative play) that relates in someway to at least one serious, adult issue (like death, war, relationships, work, etc.)

Think of an interesting point of view and narrator. (The narrator might be looking back on a childhood game and but writing as if he still believes in the make-believe, as in "Ghost Children of Tacoma." The narrator might be observing, as in "A Clean Well-Lighted Place." The observer could be a parent or stranger or someone who has only recently stopped playing imaginatively and is longing to return to childhood. The narrator might tell stories about playing and then reflect on the underlying meaning of the games.)

Include lots of very, very specific vivid and precise detail. Bring childhood alive.

Fiction Exercise #5: "Bread" and "Happy Endings" by Margaret Atwood, "The Fifth Story" by Clarice Lispector [We didn't read this one this year.]

Tell a series (3-5) very short stories, in which one literary element stays the same: characters as in "Happy Endings," an object as in "Bread," or a conflict--a woman vs. cockroaches--as in "The Fifth Story". Other elements should be varied in the linked stories.

The variations can be significant for any reason you wish. In "Happy Endings" the variations suggested something about relationships and about how since all the stories begin the same way (John and Mary) and end the same way (death) that it's what's in between that matters. In "Bread" the variations suggest something about how the meaning of an object can change when it's put in different situations.

Fiction Exercise #3: A Clean, Well-Lighted Place

Read the following story. 

Then, with Hemingway's story in mind create an exercise that has at least three "rules." When creating rules think about what Hemingway does in the story. How does he use language? Words? Sentences? What's the narrator like? How does he use dialogue? What's the conflict? How does he create characters? Observing characters? Characters who are observed? What else do you notice?

Then, a write a short-short story (200-1000) words using that exercise.

A Clean, Well-Lighted Place

BY ERNEST HEMINGWAY

It was very late and everyone had left the cafe except an old man who sat in the shadow the leaves of the tree made against the electric light. In the day time the street was dusty, but at night the dew settled the dust and the old man liked to sit late because he was deaf and now at night it was quiet and he felt the difference. The two waiters inside the cafe knew that the old man was a little drunk, and while he was a good client they knew that if he became too drunk he would leave without paying, so they kept watch on him.

"Last week he tried to commit suicide," one waiter said.

"Why?"

"He was in despair."

"What about?"

"Nothing."

"How do you know it was nothing?"

"He has plenty of money."

They sat together at a table that was close against the wall near the door of the cafe and looked at the terrace where the tables were all empty except where the old man sat in the shadow of the leaves of the tree that moved slightly in the wind. A girl and a soldier went by in the street. The street light shone on the brass number on his collar. The girl wore no head covering and hurried beside him.

"The guard will pick him up," one waiter said.

"What does it matter if he gets what he's after?"

"He had better get off the street now. The guard will get him. They went by five minutes ago."

The old man sitting in the shadow rapped on his saucer with his glass. The younger waiter went over to him.

"What do you want?"

The old man looked at him. "Another brandy," he said.

"You'll be drunk," the waiter said. The old man looked at him. The waiter went away.

"He'll stay all night," he said to his colleague. "I'm sleepy now. I never get into bed before three o'clock. He should have killed himself last week."

The waiter took the brandy bottle and another saucer from the counter inside the cafe and marched out to the old man's table. He put down the saucer and poured the glass full of brandy.

"You should have killed yourself last week," he said to the deaf man. The old man motioned with his finger. "A little more," he said. The waiter poured on into the glass so that the brandy slopped over and ran down the stem into the top saucer of the pile. "Thank you," the old man said. The waiter took the bottle back inside the cafe. He sat down at the table with his colleague again.

"He's drunk now," he said.

"He's drunk every night."

"What did he want to kill himself for?"

"How should I know."

"How did he do it?"

"He hung himself with a rope."

"Who cut him down?"

"His niece."

"Why did they do it?"

"Fear for his soul."

"How much money has he got?" "He's got plenty."

"He must be eighty years old."

"Anyway I should say he was eighty."

"I wish he would go home. I never get to bed before three o'clock. What kind of hour is that to go to bed?"

"He stays up because he likes it."

"He's lonely. I'm not lonely. I have a wife waiting in bed for me."

"He had a wife once too."

"A wife would be no good to him now."

"You can't tell. He might be better with a wife."

"His niece looks after him. You said she cut him down."

"I know." "I wouldn't want to be that old. An old man is a nasty thing."

"Not always. This old man is clean. He drinks without spilling. Even now, drunk. Look at him."

"I don't want to look at him. I wish he would go home. He has no regard for those who must work."

The old man looked from his glass across the square, then over at the waiters.

"Another brandy," he said, pointing to his glass. The waiter who was in a hurry came over.

"Finished," he said, speaking with that omission of syntax stupid people employ when talking to drunken people or foreigners. "No more tonight. Close now."

"Another," said the old man.

"No. Finished." The waiter wiped the edge of the table with a towel and shook his head.

The old man stood up, slowly counted the saucers, took a leather coin purse from his pocket and paid for the drinks, leaving half a peseta tip. The waiter watched him go down the street, a very old man walking unsteadily but with dignity.

"Why didn't you let him stay and drink?" the unhurried waiter asked. They were putting up the shutters. "It is not half-past two."

"I want to go home to bed."

"What is an hour?"

"More to me than to him."

"An hour is the same."

"You talk like an old man yourself. He can buy a bottle and drink at home."

"It's not the same."

"No, it is not," agreed the waiter with a wife. He did not wish to be unjust. He was only in a hurry.

"And you? You have no fear of going home before your usual hour?"

"Are you trying to insult me?"

"No, hombre, only to make a joke."

"No," the waiter who was in a hurry said, rising from pulling down the metal shutters. "I have confidence. I am all confidence."

"You have youth, confidence, and a job," the older waiter said. "You have everything."

"And what do you lack?"

"Everything but work."

"You have everything I have."

"No. I have never had confidence and I am not young."

"Come on. Stop talking nonsense and lock up."

"I am of those who like to stay late at the cafe," the older waiter said.

"With all those who do not want to go to bed. With all those who need a light for the night."

"I want to go home and into bed."

"We are of two different kinds," the older waiter said. He was now dressed to go home. "It is not only a question of youth and confidence although those things are very beautiful. Each night I am reluctant to close up because there may be some one who needs the cafe."

"Hombre, there are bodegas open all night long."

"You do not understand. This is a clean and pleasant cafe. It is well lighted. The light is very good and also, now, there are shadows of the leaves."

"Good night," said the younger waiter.

"Good night," the other said. Turning off the electric light he continued the conversation with himself, It was the light of course but it is necessary that the place be clean and pleasant. You do not want music. Certainly you do not want music. Nor can you stand before a bar with dignity although that is all that is provided for these hours. What did he fear? It was not a fear or dread, It was a nothing that he knew too well. It was all a nothing and a man was a nothing too. It was only that and light was all it needed and a certain cleanness and order. Some lived init and never felt it but he knew it all was nada y pues nada y nada y pues nada. Our nada who art in nada, nada be thy name thy kingdom nada thy will be nada in nada as it is in nada. Give us this nada our daily nada and nada us our nada as we nada our nadas and nada us not into nada but deliver us from nada; pues nada. Hail nothing full of nothing, nothing is with thee. He smiled and stood before a bar with a shining steam pressure coffee machine.

"What's yours?" asked the barman.

"Nada."

"Otro loco mas," said the barman and turned away.

"A little cup," said the waiter.

The barman poured it for him.

"The light is very bright and pleasant but the bar is unpolished, "the waiter said.

The barman looked at him but did not answer. It was too late at night for conversation.

"You want another copita?" the barman asked.

"No, thank you," said the waiter and went out. He disliked bars and bodegas. A clean, well-lighted cafe was a very different thing. Now, without thinking further, he would go home to his room. He would lie in the bed and finally, with daylight, he would go to sleep. After all, he said to himself, it's probably only insomnia. Many must have it.

Fiction Exercise #2: Use of Force and Popular Mechanics

Read the following two short stories. What do you notice about conflict, characterization, point of view, writing style, etc. in the stories?

After we all read the story, we'll share our observations and use them to create an exercise that will be the basis for short stories of our own.


***

The Use of Force

William Carlos Williams

They were new patients to me, all I had was the name, Olson. Please come down as soon as you can, my daughter is very sick.

When I arrived I was met by the mother, a big startled looking woman, very clean and apologetic who merely said, Is this the doctor? and let me in. In the back, she added. You must excuse us, doctor, we have her in the kitchen where it is warm. It is very damp here sometimes.

The child was fully dressed and sitting on her father’s lap near the kitchen table. He tried to get up, but I motioned for him not to bother, took off my overcoat and started to look things over. I could see that they were all very nervous, eyeing me up and down distrustfully. As often, in such cases, they weren’t telling me more than they had to, it was up to me to tell them; that’s why they were spending three dollars on me.

The child was fairly eating me up with her cold, steady eyes, and no expression to her face whatever. She did not move and seemed, inwardly, quiet; an unusually attractive little thing, and as strong as a heifer in appearance. But her face was flushed, she was breathing rapidly, and I realized that she had a high fever. She had magnificent blonde hair, in profusion. One of those picture children often reproduced in advertising leaflets and the photogravure sections of the Sunday papers.

She’s had a fever for three days, began the father and we don’t know what it comes from. My wife has given her things, you know, like people do, but it don’t do no good. And there’s been a lot of sickness around. So we tho’t you’d better look her over and tell us what is the matter.

As doctors often do I took a trial shot at it as a point of departure. Has she had a sore throat?

Both parents answered me together, No . . . No, she says her throat don’t hurt her.

Does your throat hurt you? added the mother to the child. But the little girl’s expression didn’t change nor did she move her eyes from my face.

Have you looked?

I tried to, said the mother, but I couldn’t see.

As it happens we had been having a number of cases of diphtheria in the school to which this child went during that month and we were all, quite apparently, thinking of that, though no one had as yet spoken of the thing.

Well, I said, suppose we take a look at the throat first. I smiled in my best professional manner and asking for the child’s first name I said, come on, Mathilda, open your mouth and let’s take a look at your throat.

Nothing doing.

Aw, come on, I coaxed, just open your mouth wide and let me take a look. Look, I said opening both hands wide, I haven’t anything in my hands. Just open up and let me see.

Such a nice man, put in the mother. Look how kind he is to you. Come on, do what he tells you to. He won’t hurt you.

At that I ground my teeth in disgust. If only they wouldn’t use the word “hurt” I might be able to get somewhere. But I did not allow myself to be hurried or disturbed but speaking quietly and slowly I approached the child again.

As I moved my chair a little nearer suddenly with one catlike movement both her hands clawed instinctively for my eyes and she almost reached them too. In fact she knocked my glasses flying and they fell, though unbroken, several feet away from me on the kitchen floor.

Both the mother and father almost turned themselves inside out in embarrassment and apology. You bad girl, said the mother, taking her and shaking her by one arm. Look what you’ve done. The nice man . . .

For heaven’s sake, I broke in. Don’t call me a nice man to her. I’m here to look at her throat on the chance that she might have diphtheria and possibly die of it. But that’s nothing to her. Look here, I said to the child, we’re going to look at your throat. You’re old enough to understand what I’m saying. Will you open it now by yourself or shall we have to open it for you.

Not a move. Even her expression hadn’t changed. Her breaths however were coming faster and faster. Then the battle began. I had to do it. I had to have a throat culture for her own protection. But first I told the parents that it was entirely up to them. I explained the danger but said that I would not insist on a throat examination so long as they would take the responsibility.

If you don’t do what the doctor says you’ll have to go to the hospital, the mother admonished her severely.

Oh yeah? I had to smile to myself. After all, I had already fallen in love with the savage brat, the parents were contemptible to me. In the ensuing struggle they grew more and more abject, crushed, exhausted while she surely rose to magnificent heights of insane fury of effort bred of her terror of me.

The father tried his best, and he was a big man but the fact that she was his daughter, his shame at her behavior and his dread of hurting her made him release her just at the critical times when I had almost achieved success, till I wanted to kill him. But his dread also that she might have diphtheria made him tell me to go on, go on though he himself was almost fainting, while the mother moved back and forth behind us raising and lowering her hands in an agony of apprehension.

Put her in front of you on your lap, I ordered, and hold both her wrists.

But as soon as he did the child let out a scream. Don’t, you’re hurting me. Let go of my hands. Let them go I tell you. Then she shrieked terrifyingly, hysterically. Stop it! Stop it! You’re killing me!

Do you think she can stand it, doctor! said the mother.

You get out, said the husband to his wife. Do you want her to die of diphtheria?

Come on now, hold her, I said.

Then I grasped the child’s head with my left hand and tried to get the wooden tongue depressor between her teeth. She fought, with clenched teeth, desperately! But now I also had grown furious–at a child. I tried to hold myself down but I couldn’t. I know how to expose a throat for inspection. And I did my best. When finally I got the wooden spatula behind the last teeth and just the point of it into the mouth cavity, she opened up for an instant but before I could see anything she came down again and gripping the wooden blade between her molars she reduced it to splinters before I could get it out again.

Aren’t you ashamed, the mother yelled at her. Aren’t you ashamed to act like that in front of the doctor?

Get me a smooth-handled spoon of some sort, I told the mother. We’re going through with this. The child’s mouth was already bleeding. Her tongue was cut and she was screaming in wild hysterical shrieks. Perhaps I should have desisted and come back in an hour or more. No doubt it would have been better. But I have seen at least two children lying dead in bed of neglect in such cases, and feeling that I must get a diagnosis now or never I went at it again. But the worst of it was that I too had got beyond reason. I could have torn the child apart in my own fury and enjoyed it. It was a pleasure to attack her. My face was burning with it.

The damned little brat must be protected against her own idiocy, one says to one’s self at such times.

Others must be protected against her. It is a social necessity. And all these things are true. But a blind fury, a feeling of adult shame, bred of a longing for muscular release are the operatives. One goes on to the end.

In a final unreasoning assault I overpowered the child’s neck and jaws. I forced the heavy silver spoon back of her teeth and down her throat till she gagged. And there it was–both tonsils covered with membrane.

She had fought valiantly to keep me from knowing her secret. She had been hiding that sore throat for three days at least and lying to her parents in order to escape just such an outcome as this.

Now truly she was furious. She had been on the defensive before but now she attacked. Tried to get off her father’s lap and fly at me while tears of defeat blinded her eyes.

[1938]

Popular Mechanics

Raymond Carver

Early that day the weather turned and the snow was melting into dirty water. Streaks of it ran down from the little shoulder-high window that faced the backyard. Cars slushed by on the street outside, where it was getting dark. But it was getting dark on the inside too.

He was in the bedroom pushing clothes into a suitcase when she came to the door.

I’m glad you’re leaving! I’m glad you’re leaving! she said. Do you hear?

He kept on putting his things into the suitcase.

Son of a bitch! I’m so glad you’re leaving! She began to cry. You can’t even look me in the face, can you?

Then she noticed the baby’s picture on the bed and picked it up.

He looked at her and she wiped her eyes and stared at him before turning and going back to the living room.

Bring that back, he said.

Just get your things and get out, she said.

He did not answer. He fastened the suitcase, put on his coat, looked around the bedroom before turning off the light. Then he went out to the living room.

She stood in the doorway of the little kitchen, holding the baby.

I want the baby, he said.

Are you crazy?

No, but I want the baby. I’ll get someone to come for his things.

You’re not touching this baby, she said. The baby had begun to cry and she uncovered the blanket from around his head.

Oh, oh, she said, looking at the baby.

He moved toward her.

For God’s sake! she said. She took a step back into the kitchen.

I want the baby.

Get out of here!

She turned and tried to hold the baby over in a corner behind the stove.

But he came up. He reached across the stove and tightened his hands on the baby.

Let go of him, he said.

Get away, get away! she cried.

The baby was red-faced and screaming. In the scuffle they knocked down a flowerpot that hung behind the stove. He crowded her into the wall then, trying to break her grip. He held onto the baby and pushed with all his weight.

Let go of him, he said.

Don’t, she said. You’re hurting the baby, she said.

I’m not hurting the baby, he said.

The kitchen window gave no light. In the near dark he worked on her fisted fingers with one hand and with the other hand he gripped the screaming baby up under an arm near the shoulder.

She felt her fingers being forced open. She felt the baby going from her.

No! she screamed just as her hands came loose.

She would have it, this baby. She grabbed for the baby’s other arm. She caught the baby around the wrist and leaned back.

But he would not let go. He felt the baby slipping out of his hands and he pulled back very hard.

In this manner, the issue was decided.

[1981]

Class Created Exercise:

Write a story in first person in which the narrator is engaged in a vivid physical conflict (perhaps with a family member, perhaps not). Give the physical conflict an underlying emotional motivation. Use a lot of suggestive, descriptive detail. Include some dialogue (with or without quotation marks). (Make sure every time the speaker of dialogue changes you change start a new paragraph.) Give your story a title borrowed from something else, such as a magazine (like Popular Mechanics), a song, a movie, a website, etc. The relationship between your story and the title might be ironic or suggestive rather than literal.