Verily, Verily, Verisimilitude

The Matrix Online (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

“What is real?”

Isn’t that the big question asked in The Matrix?

We live in the real, yet we crave for an escape, hence literature and film and video games.  Yet, as much as we push the boundaries of “What is real” and explore space, time periods, new worlds, ways to expand our minds, change our bodies, there still needs to be verisimilitude.

veri·si·mil·i·tude

noun \-sə-ˈmi-lə-ˌtüd, -ˌtyüd\

Definition of VERISIMILITUDE

1

: the quality or state of being verisimilar

2

: something verisimilar

— veri·si·mil·i·tu·di·nous \-ˌmi-lə-ˈtüd-nəs, -ˈtyüd-; -ˈtü-də-nəs, -ˈtyü-\adjective

Examples of VERISIMILITUDE

<the novel’s degree of verisimilitude is compromised by 18th-century characters who speak in very 21st-century English>

And there it is–like Neo, there is the invincibility that comes from stretching the dream world, and the knowledge of being tethered into reality.

For instance, I can believe a girl from Kansas can get whirled up into tornado and be dropped in a magical land of talking scarecrows, populated by little people, witches (both good and bad), flying monkeys, and horses of a different color. Nevertheless, I’d be hard pressed to believe she goes back to Kansas in a rocket ship or sprouts wings to fly there herself.  There must be real enough with our unreal.

Recently I completed a triology, where the story is set after the modern world has ended due to a pandemic virus. The world that is rebuilt is based on medieval times, complete with castles, warriors, limited technical knowledge. There is also the aspect of the people discovering the religion of their ancestors, which lends a blending of past, present, and future. I hung with the entire series, barely so at times because of one annoying problem: verisimiliutde slippage.

There we would be, the hero and heroine recointering after a tremoundous battle and after some appropriate,  credible medivialistic setting, into the dialogue would pop out, “Wow, those guys were tough.” Poof, verily, verily, the magic bubble popped. I couldn’t wrap my mind the modern vernacular.  I’m not looking for “forsooths and thous”, only credibility.

Anyone else have a book or even a film that tweaked their need for verisimilitude?

Related articles

• Today in Theatre History: THE LIMITS OF VERISIMILITUDE ARE TESTED, May 15, 1928 (padavisblog.wordpress.com)

Video Poems

While there are many ways to share poetry, be it by book, blog, spoken, or some such communique, I have found video posts to be like Dark Chocolate Dove Bites–savory and long-lasting.

Here is the poem:

This is Just to Say

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

William Carlos Williams

And here is the video:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0d5bLf0gq2Q

The poem came alive for me in a different way once viewing the performance.  I remember studying William Carlos Williams in college.  I thought his poems rather mundane–I mean, he talked about wheelbarrows, chickens, plums–all ordinary stuff.  And then I realized there is a cadence, a melody, in all those everyday aspects of life.

For more video poems go to:

www.poets.org

and

www.favoritepoem.org/videos.html

 

Happy Poetry Month!!

William Carlos Williams: writer of wheelbarrows, plums, and chickens

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Shaping Up Poetry: Object Poem

Object Poem

1.  Select an object
2.  Explore it using the following questions:
What does it look like?
How or why does it look like that?
What colors do you see?
What do the colors remind you of?
What does it smell like?
What does it feel like?

3.  Here is a guide to help structure your Poem:
First it is….
And then it is like…
And then it is like…
And now it becomes…
and now it is…
And now it is…
And now I am …

Here is an excerpt from Gift from the Sea by Anne Morrow Lindbergh.  Listen for the comparisons and descriptions based on the poem guide.

This snail shell, round, full and glossy as a horse chestnut.  Comfortable and compact, it sits curled up like a cat in the hollow of my hand.  Milky and opaque, it has the pinkish bloom of the sky on a summer evening, ripening to rain.  On its smooth symmetrical face is penciled with precision a perfect spiral, winding inward to the pinpoint center of the shell, the tiny dark core of the apex, the pupil of the eye.  It scares me, this mysterious single eye–and I stare back.

Find an object and explore it through imagery, seeing it for what it is through expanding vision.

Related articles

• Gift From The Sea (arlene1956.wordpress.com)
• What Seashells Teach Us About Life: A Look at Anne Morrow Lindbergh’s ‘Gift from the Sea’ (hersilentmusings.com)

Poem Flow

From the “About Poem Flow”:

Poem Flow is a poem-of-the day application on the Apple app platform.

Each day a new poem flows to thousands of screens around the world. Everyone receives the same poem on the same day creating an instant, invisible community of simultaneous readers. The poems are from a mix of the greatest poems in English. Turned in your hand, each poem dissolves in a gentle reading animation. Turned back, the original poem returns.

 Poem Flow is mesmerizing in how it presents a poem. Instead of the poem being present in all its form, Poem Flow segments the words so that they words appear in digestible bits of anticipation.  The poem collection is a mix of contemporary and classics; receiving a new poem every day is like receiving a daily dose of serendipity.

You can check out the site: www.poemflow.com and experiment for yourself the wonder of a poem flowing gently across your screen.

The Epicness of Poetry part two

Today we look at Homer.

This one:

Not this one:

Homer wrote The Iliad and The Odyssey, but you knew that.

These are both considered epic poems and boy, oh boy are they epic in the sense of BIG.  They are big in size (The Iliad is nearly 16,000 lines and The Odyssey is about 12,000), big on adventure, and have big heroes as well.  These two poems have also made a big impact on literature, culture, and on Hollywood.

Quick rundown:
The Iliad is mainly about Achilles and his fighting in the Trojan War (yes, think Brad Pitt in Troy), while The Odyssey is mainly about Odysseus and his adventures trying to get home from the Trojan War.

Cover of Troy – The Director’s Cut [Blu-ray]

Why should you care about these really, really old poems (besides them being so incredibly epic)?  I’ll let the PhD expert analysis people at Shmoop explain all that:

The Iliad
You want large scale clashing armies? You’ve come to the right place. Even matched duels or obviously unmatched duels? Check out the long one-on-one combat descriptions, or that crazy nonsense between Paris and Menelaus. Spy thriller? Odysseus’s nighttime raid totally fits the bill. Nail-biting special ops missions? The Trojan Horse ruse has your name written all over it. Swords-and-sorcerers magic adventure? Try anything with the gods busting in on the action, like, say, that whole Laocoon fiasco. Snakes—yikes. In short, anything exciting you’ve ever seen or heard or read started right here.But that’s not all. Not only does the Iliad put the act into action, but it puts the philosophy in there, too. This isn’t just a reductive Good Guys versus Bad Guys bit of disposable nothing. Instead, what’s behind all that fighting is a whole lot of thinking about what the fighting means.

The Odyssey
Do you like stories full of adventure, danger, and suspense? How about stories set in fantastic worlds full of strange creatures like Cyclopses, witches, sirens, and gods? If so, then you’re in luck, because Homer’s Odyssey is Western literature’s original adventure story, and its first foray into the fantasy genre. If you need any proof of how much Homer’s poem defined this genre, just consider the fact that we now use the word “odyssey” simply to mean adventure.

Beowulf, The Iliad, and The Odyssey are old, or classic, epic poems.  We now move on to contemporary, or considerably younger epic poems.

Next Post: Lost in Paradise is not the same thing as Paradise Lost

Related articles

• Review of “The Song of Achilles” by Madeline Miller (rhapsodyinbooks.wordpress.com)
• Study suggests Homeric epics were written in 762 BCE, give or take (santafe.edu)

A Garden of Verses

As children we begin our acquaintance with poetry through nursery rhymes and catchy little verse books and move up to reading by way of Dr. Seuss. If the love of poetry takes hold. Then we discover there is a world of rhyme through the pens of such poets as Jack Prelutsky (shown happily proffering his poetry pencil). And of course, Shel Silverstein.

Robert Louis Stevenson and Lewis Carroll come to mind for when we are older. And then what? We are told “good” poetry shouldn’t rhyme and rhyming verse is childish. We then go deep into the likes of Robert Frost, Longfellow, and perhaps Langston Hughes when we get into school. This is not a bad thing. Not at all. Life gets more complicated as we get older and poetry can be that reflection.

I wonder if this is where we lose the initial love of poetry, when we have to work at understanding it through its symbolism, imagery, and meter. Cats and fiddles, Jacks and Jills no longer suffice as poetry thrills. Tis a shame.
My freshmen groan and revolt when I trot out the poetry unit. I wish I could say I have swayed their opinions or created new converts at the end of the designated nine weeks, yet that doesn’t happen as often as I’d like. Most do appreciate poetry a bit more. Sure, that works for me–I’ll take it.

I wonder how many of us would continue loving poetry if we could only be allowed more Jack Prelutsky when we are all grown up.

When

Take Your Next Poem to Lunch

Silently mulling over the words, she reflected in her repose as she drank deeply of the healing verse before her….

Stop–cut–

Really, poetry doesn’t have to be all artsy, angsty to be enjoyed. The reflective part is okay, but honestly, poetry can be much more rewarding as an outward expression through sharing. During Poetry Month try some of these verse interactivities:

1.  Randomly leave a poem around the office or break room.

2.  Pack poems in your lunch for at least a week–you know, a read ‘em and eat kind of thing

3. Sign off your signature with a line from a favorite poem

4. Use a poem for a bookmark

5. Memorize a poem–one you don’t know (Robert Frost won’t mind this time)

6. Read up about a poet–most have led amazing lives

7.Watch a movie with poems–I suggest Dead Poets Society

8. Chalk poems on the sidewalk

9. Attach a poem to a balloon and release it

10. Revisit a poem–has it changed in meaning for you?

Frost Covered Spring

Robert Frost. My first meaningful encounter with poetry occurred in fifth grade when Mr. C (still my favorite teacher) had us memorize “Stopping By Woods” and then we chalked our impressions of the poem onto dark blue construction paper. These were then pinned all around the classroom as the border above the chalkboard. As I teach this poem to my students I learn more and more from it. Frost does that with his poetry. It appears so deceptively simple at first and then there is a realization of its depth. It can be almost embarrassing at times once the analytical epiphany hits.

But I can’t imagine Frost laughing at my denseness–no, he would probably only chuckle. I imagine he might even be amused at the fuss we make analyzing his commentaries on birches, walls, and the snowy woods.

Frost is one of my faves and thought it very appropriate to feature him first among the many poets I hope to spotlight this month.

Here are a smattering of favorite poems:
“Mending Walls”
“Acquainted With The Night”
“The Road Not Taken”
“Fire and Ice”
“Nothing Gold Can Stay”

What are your favorite Frost verses? For some reason whenever spring arrives I tend to think of Robert Frost. Maybe this is fitting–a bit of Frost helps us appreciate the warmth of spring. I think he realized that as well.

Happy Poetry Month!

Wives and Daughters

One of the final pages from the manuscript for Wives and Daughters (The Works of Mrs. Gaskell, Knutsford Edition) (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Have you ever eagerly brought a movie home only to discover you’ve watched it before?

When that happens I either slip it out and chastise myself for my negligent memory or shrug and go for it anyway.  Such was the case with BBC’s production of Gaskell’s Wives and Daughters.

 

Lovely.  I watched the whole thing in one sitting.  I would not do well with the weekly installment watch plan anymore.  I tend to eat all my Haagen-Daaz in one sitting too.

As for Wives and Daughters I think Gaskell should have actually named the series, The Doctor’s Daughter because it all centered on Molly, who was the doctor’s daughter.  I didn’t see much about wives and only a couple of daughters were the focus.  Maybe I will have to read the book.  And right now I am trying to do so.  It’s not working.

One problem I am finding out with watching really wonderful BBC adaptations is that they quench my desire to dig into the book.  I really should stick to my book first policy.

 

If you should hunger after a character driven historical plot that is reminiscent of Jane Austen’s complicated romance plots, then do look up Gaskell and her Wives and Daughters–watching or reading it is too personal of a decision for me to actually recommend. Umm-I did really like, really like the BBC more than I have Gaskell’s flowery writing.  But don’t let me influence you.

Bookmarks Past and Present

It’s not often I read a book in one sitting, and finding a bookmark is often a necessity that leaves me in a bit of a flummox.  I try to keep one consistent bookmark, yet that seem to evaporate.  My current favorite is a ticket from a vacation spent in Seattle.  I have attached good memories to the stub and combined with a good read it’s a double pleasure.  I’ve managed to keep hold of it since summer.  It might just be a record.

Bookmarks come and gone:

• paper scraps:
• 

  napkins

• yarn

• 
• pens, pencils

• odd bits: flashlights, calculators, television remotes

• 

• 

  Then there are the bookmarks that are actually bookmarks. The MEPA has provided the niftiest magnetic bookmarks.  The library seems to collect them more than I–they have reminded me more than once that I have left them once again in a book returned to them.

• 

  What about your bookmarks?  Any oddities or favorites to share?

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