So much sensory detail! I love that water is anthropomorphized, laughing and running. You use balance, the pairing of two things, at the end, which then holds a pattern of the same stresses: PEbbles and BOUlders. (heavy stress in caps), and that creates an eloquent tone.
So lovely! The past participial phrase describing the swallows, "crazed by the blackened, razed city," raises the stakes. The birds are in trouble. With the word "razed" we know the linden trees are gone. You, too, are showing the mesh between living beings in this sentence.
Look how the copper, color of the rising sun, heated by the blowers’ winds swirling from three directions around the crucible swells to the size of the mountain cauldron’s lake of fire.
See how the copper color of the rising sun, become molten in the crucible, the womb from which the molten metal is poured into the mold, births a snake.
The imperative is so strong. I feel it as a direct address to me. Both examples are powerful. In the second one, you've extended the metaphor of birth with "become" (I think "becomes" to match the subject "copper"), womb, and births. And the image of a snake is really surprising in a good way. Everything up to that point felt beautiful. I'd also add a comma in the second example between "copper" and "color," so it's clear the phrase "color of the rising sun" is describing copper. In both examples, copper feels alive, which is so cool
Hi Nina, thanks for this beautiful exercise. I was surprised by what came up for me. It’s a short poem. Is it okay if I use these exercises to write poetry? Sharing mine here:
Oh, I love this! There is a wonderful mix of specificity and vagueness that bursts this open to many different interpretations. The word quivers leads to sparrow. Sparrow leads to bird which becomes connected to flowering and death. Amazing! I feel the movement of associations.
Ipods out, ride, listen to the soft one note song of your unicycle reflected off its new tires, oiled chain, and shiny silver fork; now quieter, gently dismount: relaxed.
Beautiful! The imperative works so well here, and the cluster of heavier stresses, "soft one note song" that is softened by the sibilants. An entire ride in that one sentence. Because of the change, the new tires, oiled chain, shiny silver fork, the ride is different this time. A change in story for the unicycle and the rider.
Yesterday, I opened Voung’s novel at page one in the morning, comfortable on my deck. I fell under his spell. Hours later I realized I forgot to eat, I forgot to stand.
Nina, I plan to write my sub stack this week on Ocean Vuongs new novel and I hope you will allow me to quote from your analysis today as I think it is remarkably insightful. I’ll attribute your substack of course.
Gorgeous! "Anvils" is the perfect image to depict the hardness and hardship of the day-to-day. The technique is called metonymy, in which a concept or object is referred to by something closely associated with it. I also love the antithesis or opposition between the hardness in the first part of the sentence, and the second part of the sentence, beginning with the verb "dissolve." A beautiful transformation that's wedded to the natural world, "first breezes of night."
Listen as the water, glacial above the rock field for centuries, runs and laughs as it melts and flows in open air over pebbles and boulders.
So much sensory detail! I love that water is anthropomorphized, laughing and running. You use balance, the pairing of two things, at the end, which then holds a pattern of the same stresses: PEbbles and BOUlders. (heavy stress in caps), and that creates an eloquent tone.
Hear the swallows, crazed by the blackened, razed city, cry out in search of those linden tree arms that once held them close.
So lovely! The past participial phrase describing the swallows, "crazed by the blackened, razed city," raises the stakes. The birds are in trouble. With the word "razed" we know the linden trees are gone. You, too, are showing the mesh between living beings in this sentence.
Two attempts:
Look how the copper, color of the rising sun, heated by the blowers’ winds swirling from three directions around the crucible swells to the size of the mountain cauldron’s lake of fire.
See how the copper color of the rising sun, become molten in the crucible, the womb from which the molten metal is poured into the mold, births a snake.
The imperative is so strong. I feel it as a direct address to me. Both examples are powerful. In the second one, you've extended the metaphor of birth with "become" (I think "becomes" to match the subject "copper"), womb, and births. And the image of a snake is really surprising in a good way. Everything up to that point felt beautiful. I'd also add a comma in the second example between "copper" and "color," so it's clear the phrase "color of the rising sun" is describing copper. In both examples, copper feels alive, which is so cool
Oh, thanks. I'm working on making things seem magical and filled with power.
Great! I think metaphor, personification and anthropomorphism help to invoke that magic.
Hi Nina, thanks for this beautiful exercise. I was surprised by what came up for me. It’s a short poem. Is it okay if I use these exercises to write poetry? Sharing mine here:
Listen.
Even a violin
quivers in your hand
like a sparrow.
How a bird cries & cries.
Before flowering open
on a stranger's coffin.
Oh, I love this! There is a wonderful mix of specificity and vagueness that bursts this open to many different interpretations. The word quivers leads to sparrow. Sparrow leads to bird which becomes connected to flowering and death. Amazing! I feel the movement of associations.
Ipods out, ride, listen to the soft one note song of your unicycle reflected off its new tires, oiled chain, and shiny silver fork; now quieter, gently dismount: relaxed.
Beautiful! The imperative works so well here, and the cluster of heavier stresses, "soft one note song" that is softened by the sibilants. An entire ride in that one sentence. Because of the change, the new tires, oiled chain, shiny silver fork, the ride is different this time. A change in story for the unicycle and the rider.
Yesterday, I opened Voung’s novel at page one in the morning, comfortable on my deck. I fell under his spell. Hours later I realized I forgot to eat, I forgot to stand.
Nina, I plan to write my sub stack this week on Ocean Vuongs new novel and I hope you will allow me to quote from your analysis today as I think it is remarkably insightful. I’ll attribute your substack of course.
Yes! Thank you so much!
Lovely sentence, but I stumbled a bit at its end. I anteceded (?) 'their' to the birch trees, not the birds, until I reflected a second.
If I read the sentence without the 'blackened...' clause, then it is the birches that have beaks.
Am I thinking too much?
No, you're right. It's a little wobbly, and that's why I kept thinking about the fusion between the trees and the birds.
"Fusion" clears it all up; the trees and the birds are one, and so the beaks are part of the single organism.
Smell the heat of bodies, belaboured by anvils of the day, dissolve into pools of mysteries with the first breezes of night.
Gorgeous! "Anvils" is the perfect image to depict the hardness and hardship of the day-to-day. The technique is called metonymy, in which a concept or object is referred to by something closely associated with it. I also love the antithesis or opposition between the hardness in the first part of the sentence, and the second part of the sentence, beginning with the verb "dissolve." A beautiful transformation that's wedded to the natural world, "first breezes of night."