{"id":3577,"date":"2015-08-13T01:00:35","date_gmt":"2015-08-13T08:00:35","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/thewritespot.us\/marlenecullenblog\/?p=3577"},"modified":"2015-08-17T15:54:44","modified_gmt":"2015-08-17T22:54:44","slug":"guest-blogger-daniel-ari-sense-and-specificity","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thewritespot.us\/marlenecullenblog\/guest-blogger-daniel-ari-sense-and-specificity\/","title":{"rendered":"Guest Blogger Daniel Ari: Sense And Specificity . . ."},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Daniel<\/a>Guest Blogger Daniel Ari writes about Sense And Specificity: The Soul of Great Writing<\/p>\n

Great art is about balance. Okay, great art is about a heck of a lot of things. But one thing that makes great writing stand out from the superfluity of all writing is that it strikes a balance between emotional abstraction and concrete specificity.<\/p>\n

We want to read about things like devotion, honor and transformation. But the actual words devotion, honor<\/em> and transformation <\/em>aren\u2019t concrete enough to sweep a reader away. As I discussed in\u00a0“How to Make Your Poems Stand Out: Advice From a Reader<\/a>” for Writer’s Digest online,\u00a0 abstract nouns can\u2019t be grabbed, and they don\u2019t grab readers. And what\u2019s worse, they tend to come in flocks. Once a writer writes honor<\/em>, then love<\/em> and respect<\/em> want to come in. Then deep, forever, <\/em>and mutual<\/em> are at the door, having chased away all the beautiful specifics like moonstone, cardamom, <\/em>and foxtrot.<\/em><\/p>\n

But luckily, concrete nouns also come in flocks. That\u2019s because when you tell a story or describe a moment, either remembered or imagined, the telling includes all the specific things that make the moment unique and moving. If you want to test whether your writing is too abstract, imagine illustrating it. Could you? If there aren\u2019t enough nouns and verbs to make into a drawing or painting, then your writing may be too abstract to interest most readers.<\/p>\n

Allen Ginsberg put it well: \u201cYou can\u2019t write about \u2018The Stars.\u2019 You can go out one night and see a glitter in Orion\u2019s belt, or see a constellation hanging over Nebraska, and that\u2019s universal. But it\u2019s got to be over Nebraska\u2014particular\u2014otherwise it isn\u2019t universal. If it\u2019s just the stars in the abstract you don\u2019t even see them, so it\u2019s not a living experience. It\u2019s not an instant in time actually observed, and only instants in time are universal.<\/strong>\u201d<\/p>\n

What\u2019s universal is the sense of being human that we translate into language as writers and that readers translate back into thought. That\u2019s why concrete sense imagery is so crucial. That\u2019s how the abstract system of language is able to relate living humans to one another\u2014though memory and imagination of sensed experience.<\/p>\n

Here are two poems that I think do a good job of being relatable by being specific. The first is one of my own, a draft in a series about a legendary backwoods character named Starlight. The second is by Rebecca Auerbach, and I think it\u2019s wonderful how her imagery isn\u2019t just visual, but also auditory, and even more interesting how the sensation she describes is often the absence of sensation and hunger for it.<\/p>\n

“To build a supper”<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

by Daniel Ari<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

Without matches, I\u2019m sure I could build a fire.\r\nI may be city, but I\u2019m not dumb. I would\r\njust use a lighter. No lighter either? Hm.\r\nThen I\u2019d use friction between two bits of wood\r\nto weave threads of smoke into a baby spark\r\n \r\nthen huff and puff the infant in a hoodie\r\nof soft, dry bark or needles. I\u2019d be famished\r\nby the time the contained blaze could be called good.\r\nThen I\u2019d have to start the hunting or fishing\r\nor just eat miner\u2019s lettuce and blackberries.\r\n \r\nI wonder how much hungry equals finished.\r\nLost in the woods, I\u2019d be grateful for Starlight.\r\nShe knows a thousand growing things that furnish\r\nsustenance and comfort. She could catch a trout\r\nwith a thorn hook\u2014or we could stalk the shoulder\r\n \r\nof Tyler-Foote Road for fresh (truck-)grilled meat,\r\na bumper crop of headlight venison.\r\n<\/strong><\/span><\/pre>\n
\n
**********************************************<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n
\n
\u00a0untitled<\/strong><\/p>\n
by Rebecca Auerbach<\/p>\n
We used to start with eyes meeting,<\/p>\n
exchanging a smile,<\/p>\n
then voices,<\/p>\n
speaking, sharing names.<\/p>\n
Now we start with a photograph & a profile.<\/p>\n
If you like the way a man smiles<\/p>\n
when he isn\u2019t smiling at you,<\/p>\n
the way he introduces himself<\/p>\n
when he isn\u2019t meeting you,<\/p>\n
you might exchange words without voices,<\/p>\n
& if you like what he says when you can\u2019t hear him,<\/p>\n
you might consent to speak aloud by phone,<\/p>\n
& if you like how he speaks to you<\/p>\n
when he has never seen you,<\/p>\n
you might<\/p>\n
maybe<\/p>\n
consent to look into his eyes.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n
\u00a0<\/em>Daniel Ari<\/a> began dancing to Freeze Frame\u201d by The J. Geils Band at an 8th<\/sup> grade dance in 1981. He hasn\u2019t stopped. About five years later, he began courting poetry as a practice, and that, too has stuck. As a poet and professional writer these days, movement remains key to his creativity. \u00a0Daniel recently won Grand Prize in the Dancing Poetry Festival, and his poem about swing will be set to choreography and performed at the Legion of Honor in September. His forthcoming book One Way To Ask<\/em> from Zoetic Press, pairs poems in an original form called queron<\/em>, with artwork by 67 artists including Roz Chast, Tony Millionaire, Bill Griffith and R. Crumb.<\/p>\n
Daniel Ari will be the August 20, 2015 Writers Forum <\/a>Presenter in Petaluma, CA<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Guest Blogger Daniel Ari writes about Sense And Specificity: The Soul of Great Writing Great art is about balance. Okay, great art is about a heck of a lot of things. But one thing that makes great writing stand out from the superfluity of all writing is that it strikes a balance between emotional abstraction […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"sfsi_plus_gutenberg_text_before_share":"","sfsi_plus_gutenberg_show_text_before_share":"","sfsi_plus_gutenberg_icon_type":"","sfsi_plus_gutenberg_icon_alignemt":"","sfsi_plus_gutenburg_max_per_row":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[104],"tags":[510,351,746],"class_list":["post-3577","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-guest-bloggers","tag-daniel-ari","tag-petaluma-writers-forum","tag-rebecca-auerbach"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p43Dj8-VH","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thewritespot.us\/marlenecullenblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3577","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thewritespot.us\/marlenecullenblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thewritespot.us\/marlenecullenblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thewritespot.us\/marlenecullenblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thewritespot.us\/marlenecullenblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3577"}],"version-history":[{"count":16,"href":"https:\/\/thewritespot.us\/marlenecullenblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3577\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3623,"href":"https:\/\/thewritespot.us\/marlenecullenblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3577\/revisions\/3623"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thewritespot.us\/marlenecullenblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3577"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thewritespot.us\/marlenecullenblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3577"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thewritespot.us\/marlenecullenblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3577"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}