The Luminous Object

This exercise is designed to give you practice with three key skills:

• Very close attention to, and respect for, everything "things" around you;
• The ability to render those things in super lucid, precise, concrete detail; and
• The ability to DEFAMILIARIZE those things—to see them in completely fresh and strange ways. I.e., to renew the world through language.

Instructions

Get a toaster. Any toaster. Put it someplace where toasters usually aren't found: your living room, bedroom, porch, office, classroom. Plug it in and insert two slices of toast.

—Or—

Find an object associated with a particular family member. Any object that just sort of piques your interest. Do NOT select something which has easy, obvious meaning to you. Pick something you've maybe found intriquing since you were a kid or which, for some reason, reminds you of the person in question.

Now do the following:

1. Write a poem in which ou describe your object. Exactly. Concretely. With specific DETAIL DETAIL DETAIL. Use all of your senses. Just "see" the thing, in all of its "thingness." Be exact and specific. Do not use generalities or abstractions. RESPECT THE THING.
   
   When you feel done, look at what you've written. It SUCKS! You haven't described the object at all. You haven't really looked at all. Click here for a poem by Elizabeth Bishop—a piece which REALLY involves LOOKING. She looks all the way to the INSIDE of her subject, both literally and figuratively.
   
   Go back to your own poem and try again! Specific, concrete, sensory DETAIL. Walk around the object, get under the object, hold the object in the air. Smell it. Touch it. Weigh it. Listen to it—even if it doesn't make any sounds! Do not say "white" or "green" or "red." What KIND of white or green or red? Improve the poem you first wrote. Crank up your senses. Pay attention. Put in more toast. RESPECT THE THING.
   
   
2. Write a second poem. This time, however, let yourself go. See the object as though you were a little kid, or someone from Mars, or someone about to die, or someone who has just finished swimming across Lake Superior. Use really interesting, unexpected language. Use a thesaurus if you have to! Do not, on pain of death, use clichés. Let the object act as a springboard to any and all other subjects. (Start with the object and wind up someplace else.)
   
   When you feel done, look at your poem. It's terrible. It's predictable. It's a Hallmark card. Go back inside of the experience and SEE again. Make your reader see it again, like they never have before. Be weird. Be surprising.
   
   If you're having trouble, try writing from the point of view of the object itself. Or write it as though you had either suddenly grown to 20 times your normal height, or shrunk to the size of a pea.
   
   For some additional poems by Elizabeth Bishop, poems from strange points of view, click here. (Note: she lived in Brazil for awhile, which is why she writes about giant turtles and toads. Notice of course that she actually writes in the voice of those creatures! In the third poem, "!2-O'Clock News," she takes the point of view and voice of some teeny-tiny someone who is somehow positioned on a writer's desk.)
   
   Also take a look at some of Pablo Neruda's odes. He was a Chilean poet who often wrote about common, everyday things. He has a huge collection of poems, in fact, which he called Elemental Odes (odes to plain things). Click here for a sample. Notice in particular his use of figurative language--how he'll compare an object to ANOTHER object, but something really unexpected. For instance: a pair of everyday old socks become sharks, firemen, and huge blackbirds.
   

When finished with your two poems, post them in our Blackboard Discssion Board, the "Weekly Exercises" forum.

Evaluation Criteria

There are no length, style, or form requirements for either one of these poems. Just pay heed to the following: for poem #1, be sure to use LOTS of specific, concrete, sensory, descriptive detail, and avoid abstraction. (If necessary, look up the meaning of "concrete" vs. "abstract.") For poem #2, be sure to get weird. Really. Be surprising and take chances. I'd rather get an awkward and problematic but INTERESTING poem than a perfectly polite and correct but DULL poem.

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