“Caryl Pagel’s poems float and drift and alight in just the right places.” From “How I Write” in The October 2014 issue of The Writer magazine.
Caryl says, “I start with a doo-dee-da-de-dee-dum-dee in mind and rhyme it with a bloop-bee-doop-bee, or something like that. A clearing of the throat. A hum.”
Marlene’s Musings: Sounds like a good way to write just about anything. I love watching words fall into place and enjoy the sounds and rhythm of words . . . this goes for prose as well as poetry.
How do you feel about words and sounds and rhythm? Tell us, we want to know.
Please follow and like us:
Ke11y
Ten thousand dawns I’ve waited, ten thousand sunsets disappointed and broken. What happened when days were made reckless, and I stamped and raged my love like a wild wind against the rocky shore? It all seems so far away now. I’ve never been afraid before. Dying was always some silly trick that would surely never catch me out.
No longer is there a bed I visit, and sleep till dawn. I sit at my desk, write my dreams without my head ever touching a pillow. Such dreams a man has no right to expect come true; dreams where sweetness is not sickly; lovemaking never dull; two people whose lives are entwined by mystery, interest, respect, passion, and a simple desire to please, giving back all that has been given.
I age in the world of modern man, the courting of young women with tattooed butts, silver pierced tongues; the Amazonian woman of San Francisco! Perhaps being unique, anything to be different; where none can see the potential for being the same? Does a piercing help to understand a beggar? Does any modern day woman, or man, feel the excitement of living for someone other than themselves? No, for it cannot be, it is too much to expect, and wrong to expect, for only age brings acceptance.
I have become my own story. I’ve had to learn patience, understanding, tolerance, tenderness, for only now am I mastering life. This is not my smile. It is not my body. It is quite simply the vessel in which I sail my life, and one day this vessel will sail no more, but the wind will carry my life forward; it will deepen and grow and become part of the great night that happens in the heavens.
There is no trick up my sleeve. There is no magician of the word, none. I’m just a man. When you tell me you love me, you must be careful to observe the fireworks that happen, yes, fireworks blasting great holes in my saddened world.
mcullen Post author
I am in complete awe! I love the vessel/sailing metaphor. Love the openness of this writing that explores and dives deep and surfaces with amazing epiphanies.
wrdpntr
I’ve always loved words, in my youth, I tried to cram too many of them into my writing. Now, I try to focus on choosing the right words–the pithy ones that fit the piece. Less is more and better, too. I find that I tend to plagiarize myself (!), so I have to look out for words I reuse too often. I’ve recently started reading my work out loud when I write, to hear the rhythm and sound, which helps determine line breaks. Poetry is music and sound as much as words and meaning.
mcullen Post author
Love this, wrdpntr51, and I agree. I especially love, “tried to cram too many of them into my writing” and “I tend to plagiarize myself.” I enjoy your writing style.
Ke11y
Prose is words in their best order…but poetry…poetry is the ‘best’ words in their ‘best’ order.
Your writing, wrdpntr, is considered craftmanship, and for that alone, I’m envious. But there is so much more, and my envy can only stand so much!
Ke11y
Did I ever know about silence before I learned about the shore, the sand, and two people comfortable enough in love to remain quiet with each other? I think I did, I think I may have spoken to the world about such a feeling.
Yes, I remember the beach where we walked, talked, and held each other safe. These long years later it’s as if I’m still a boy on the shore, where the wind, the waves, and the tides absorb me, take me in, and make me whole. Even back then, being so young, I sheltered among words, made up lies, writing in my room, afraid to show what it was I was doing, just a boy and his dreams of one day being something to everyone.
I was a teenager before the time my love of writing was truly recognized by my parents. It was my birthday. Fourteen. It sat there on the table, a Corona typewriter, and I wept with joy because it meant they knew. They could have bought a new shirt, even a car, but the used typewriter sat there; recognition that words meant something in my life.
Did they ever think I could just pick words out of the sky? Those ones floating just above my head, simply to bring them down and scribble them onto paper? Dear God, what I would give to think I could do that instead of ringing them out of my hurt or happiness, my understanding and my not understanding, or the tears I used for ink when I was young and naive. Do you want to know how difficult I am? How bloody minded, arrogant, how selfish I can be? Do you want to know how my legs feel when someone says ‘thank you for what you’ve written; thank you for writing that poem, or that song, they mean a lot to me?’ I’ll tell you, I fall apart, I go to pieces because I don’t know how to say well enough what I want to say, how complimented and humble I feel because the very words ‘thank you’ reduce me to tears. Instead, I crush them with a throw-away line, a cynical catch-phrase, or a thread of sharp arrogance, or I never tell at all, because who will really understand how touched I am, how much such a thing means, how I could fall apart right in front of them, or want to hug them.
The stories I write are of my own invention, they belong to no-one else but me, they’re what I feel, what I need, they’re my cries, my despairs, my jubilation, my triumphs, they’re who I am and cannot be taken from me. I’m not a sad man, but the saddest things have happened, that’s all. I’ve been blessed in such a way I can hardly relate to people anymore, I’m confused all the time. My whole body wants to reach out, say hey, listen, how are you? Tell me what’s happening, I need to know, I need to know everything. Is any man bigger than his own ideas? Can any man be finer than his finest dreams, as awful as his own nightmares suggest?
So as I write I find myself becoming a sort of great wondrous child? And as sentences are built I have to ask: who built me, and set me running, don’t even you know? I fight the quiet war each day, waking up and wishing I could burn myself down, start over. After everything, all the adventures, and there have been many, after perfection, or something that felt like it, after all the travelling, I’ve arrived in some place, here I think, to be confronted with the sweetness of a woman. A woman who knows nothing of me, asks no questions, demands nothing, and has no idea what she is dealing with. I stay because I want this woman’s love. I’ve earned it. It’s mine. Knowing her is like putting on a comfortable sweater, with a hole in the arm that must be repaired, but on some other day, not today, I still need it.
The more I trust in my writing the more I can see who I am, and where my work is going. I’m just a writer. I love to write. If a reader reads something I wrote, and relates to it, then maybe that becomes their experience. But too, maybe it was not my intention. That’s the beauty of it all. I write because I cannot do anything else. I’m clumsy, inarticulate with the spoken word, but when my keyboard starts to dance my world comes alive, it’s the place I want to be, it’s ‘the art of being lost’. I write to have someone else’s eyes reading the words. I write because my heartbeat is amplified, because the scent and taste of everything is in my fingertips. I write to entertain, amuse, and touch. I write about families, children, monsters, witches, but I never write about myself, and yet I’m all of them. I am the mystery, The Cyrano De Bergerac. The ugly one. Gone are the times at night I wake up thinking the phone is ringing to tell me bad news. I’m in a cold sweat. It’s frightening.
These days I’m faced with new realities. Today I’m no longer alone. I have the company of a lifetime. More at home than I’ve ever been, and it isn’t the place, but the person I’m with. I’ve learned that home is indeed where the heart is.
mcullen Post author
There’s so much I want to say in response to your writing, Kelly, but now I’m the one feeling inarticulate. But of course, that won’t stop me from trying! I feel the heartbeat of this piece, the deep insides of this tender-hearted writer and I’m thankful, grateful to be able to experience this writing that leaves a strong visceral feeling in me. I love the progression from the youngster with the Corona (and oh, how I can relate to that) to the joy and the humility when one’s writing is read, understood and appreciated and on to the stories as personal inventions. There are so many lines in this piece that I love. And I do fall in love with gorgeous writing. Here’s what I wish: that your writing, and especially this piece, could be bound in a book so that many others can discover your exquisite writing and so that I could open this treasury of words to read and re-read whenever I want to read gorgeous writing. Thank you very much for sharing your writing.
Ke11y
I carry your words like a candle in my heart.
mcullen Post author
Warmth and lighting the way.
wrdpntr
Thank you, mcullen and Ke11y. I have to turn the compliments around and send them to both of you too. I see visionary ideas + craftsmanship in writing from both of you.
Ke11y
I am the son of fishermen
Gnarl-fisted men of the sea
Who throw their garbage overboard
And stand on the poop to pee!
I am descended of fishermen
Who lie in the merciless deep;
Could be they just fell overboard
While drunk or half-asleep . . .
I am the child of fishermen
Who cursed God for their bad luck!
Through tempting fate like they did
Surely sank the Farting Duck . . .
I am no more a fisherman,
They took my boat away!
They say the world’s a safer place – Ha Ha!
I bought a plane today!
mcullen Post author
Funny and clever. Love the surprise last line . . . great humor!