#storytelling poetry

[and-corn]

B I G N E W S !

I've made an art book and the Kickstarter is about to launch! It has writing, illustrations, and comics similar to this one! It's called Waving at Airplanes and it's probably the largest project I've ever done (I'm quite proud of it).

The book will also include this comic, this one, plus this, and this - AND 6 additional, never-before-seen comics/illustrations! So if you happen to like those comics, it would mean a lot if you considered getting the book! You can check out the Kickstarter page here!

Since the artwork is already done, the Kickstarter is really just a pre-order (to cover the cost of having the books printed and shipped). It launches on 9/9/2024 and will last 4 weeks!

Thank you! These comics may not be my most popular, but they are the most personal to me, and the support for them is really special.

[luthienne]

from "11 POEMS—TITLES BY AZIZ SHIHAB—FROM HIS NOTEBOOKS" as featured in Naomi Shihab Nye's Transfer: Poems

[sprachgitter]

on storytelling and repetition

“...the secret of the Great Stories is that they have no secrets. The Great Stories are the ones you have heard and want to hear again. The ones you can enter anywhere and inhabit comfortably. They don’t deceive you with thrills and trick endings. They don’t surprise you with the unforeseen. They are as familiar as the house you live in. Or the smell of your lover’s skin. You know how they end, yet you listen as though you don’t. In the way that although you know that one day you will die, you live as though you won’t. In the Great Stories you know who lives, who dies, who finds love, who doesn’t. And yet you want to know again.”

— Arundhati Roy on Indian mythology and folklore, in God of Small Things (1997)

“It was only once – once – that an audience went to see Romeo and Juliet, and hoped they might live happily ever after. You can bet that the word soon went around the playhouses: they don’t get out of that tomb alive. But every time it’s been played, every night, every show, we stand with Romeo at the Capulets’ monument. We know: when he breaks into the tomb, he will see Juliet asleep, and believe she is dead. We know he will be dead himself before he knows better. But every time, we are on the edge of our seats, holding out our knowledge like a present we can’t give him.”

— Hilary Mantel on Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet, in “Can These Bones Live?”, Reith Lecture, 2017

“So what makes this poem mnemonic is not just repetition. Rather, it’s the fact that with repetition, the repeated phrase grows more and more questionable. I’ve remembered “Come on now, boys” because, with every new repetition, it seems to offer more exasperation than encouragement, more doubt than assertion. I remembered this refrain because it kept me wondering about what it meant, which is to say, it kept me wondering about the kind of future it predicted. What is mnemonic about this repetition is not the reader’s ability to remember it, but that the phrase itself remembers something about the people it addresses; it remembers violence. Repetition, then, is not only a demonstration of something that keeps recurring: an endless supply of new generations of cruel boys with sweaty fists. It is also about our inability to stop this repetition: the established cycles of repetition are like spells and there’s no anti-spell to stop them from happening. The more we repeat, the less power we have over the words and the more power the words have over us. Poetic repetition is about the potency of language and the impotence of its speakers. In our care, language is futile and change is impossible.”

— Valzhyna Mort on Russian poet Yevgeny Yevtushenko, in “FACE – FACE – FACE: A Poet Under the Spell of Loss”, The Poetry Society Annual Lecture, 2021

[tohakumaru]

[project page]

>walk away, go with the nomad. i love you.

since you cannot cry, you make an effort to push the stale air out of your lungs, a poor imitation of a sigh - i guess bad habits really die hard. if the nomad has noticed, then it pays you no mind and simply carries on. casting one last lingering glance at the water and the sky above, you dutifully follow. after a short while, it becomes clear that something has changed. the nomad has picked up its pace, moving in erratic strides. here and there, you find it dashing across the sand, beak and head angled upwards, as though searching, or following an invisible thread in the air, one that you can feel, but cannot quite grasp, like a long forgotten name - always on the tip of your tongue, yet never to be spoken aloud. at times, you struggle to keep up. it's so hard, you're so tired, it's too much. your eyes burn with fatigue. you want to scream, to beg the bird-thing to slow down, but the words evade you everytime you open your mouth, and the nomad does not so much as look at you. a hot and bitter pressure builds behind your nose and muffles your ears. once again you feel yourself falling apart - but the blanket wrapped around your frame and the water sloshing in your hollow stomach seem to work against your body's trajectory to disintegrate, two forces swirling inside and all around you, like a wicked pendulum that propels you forward despite, despite.

i won't let you go, should have known that from the start.

---

tenderly her eyes made their pilgrimage across the mounds of glass and steel, mourning perhaps hunger is a cure for insanity, shut-you-up-real-nice knowing full well being alive is a horrendously beautiful thing while the dogs, blood stained snouts dig out the madness, turn it into a five course meal heaving, a still-beating heart melts like butter on their lips as poorly clipped nails fumbled and fussed,

just enough to make a day-ride.

---

in this fashion, you and the nomad dance across the white sand for some time, until a hillside comes into view. upon closer inspection, you are awed to realise it is made entirely of roots. at the foot of this strange hill, a grove - an incredible indent in that tangled mass that is the tree-hill - opens up and presents an even more curious sight: 12 creatures, each bearing the likeness of a bird, but is clearly not one. they stand stock-still and solemn, with multitudes of dried flowers and glittering gemstones at their feet. their faces, elongated and coming to pointy, beak-like ends, are not dissimilar to the nomad, but much more haggard; and so immobile, it is easy to mistake them for statues, has there not been the occassional puffs of dusty smoke and shrill noises, like a kettle boiling over, coming from their beaks and throats that betray any hints of liveliness about them.

the nomad slows its steps, and looks down. it keeps its eyes to the ground as you get nearer to the grove. it occurs to you that it is avoiding the living-statues' gaze. surprisingly, they reciprocrate the gesture. Ever so slightly each of them turn their head, so their eyes fall off the nomad, and onto … you. you, who does not belong you, who comes on a leash, believing it to be choice you, who dies, and nothing changes

to your bewilderment, the statues came to life, all at once. they grovel at the flowers and gems, and toss them in handfuls at you as the nomad leads you through the grove, leaving a trail of petals and stones. when you pass the 12th statue and come to the end of the opening, everything suddenly shifts: slowly, mechanically, the roots shape themselves into a winding stairway, leading you up the hill.

calmly, the nomad signals you to go up.

what do you do?

[previous chapter]

[fixing-bad-posts]

there are alot of stories. Far more than you think. an echo of people who are themselves the truth

[literaryvein-reblogs]

Writing Notes: Kurt Vonnegut’s 8 Tenets of Storytelling

8 tips on how to write a good short story

Use the time of a total stranger in such a way that he or she will not feel the time was wasted.

Give the reader at least one character he or she can root for.

Every character should want something, even if it is only a glass of water.

Every sentence must do one of two things — reveal character or advance the action.

Start as close to the end as possible.

Be a Sadist. No matter how sweet and innocent your leading characters, make awful things happen to them-in order that the reader may see what they are made of.

Write to please just one person. If you open a window and make love to the world, so to speak, your story will get pneumonia.

Give your readers as much information as possible as soon as possible. To hell with suspense. Readers should have such complete understanding of what is going on, where and why, that they could finish the story themselves, should cockroaches eat the last few pages.

[pascal-bernheim]

📷 SHELDON Lausanne Juillet 2014 / July 2014

[asliceoflife]

[itty-clover]

[worldwidewandress]

"nothing ever ends poetically. it ends and we turn it into poetry. all that blood was never once beautiful. it was just red"

[into-ition]

The Debt

Bob robs Peter to finally pay Paul,

for the five hundred dollars Paul loaned him last fall.

Bob felt ashamed but he needed the dough,

and knew that good Peter would not even know.

Paul gets the cash and is off in a sprint,

to pay back old Morris for the money he lent.

Old Morris is happy with money in hand,

and finds young Maurice to pay him as planned.

Young Maurice is happy with five hundred bones

and goes to his uncle to pay off his loans.

Maurice’s uncle is proud of the boy,

and heads off to locate his good friend Miss Joy.

Miss Joy is a helper who’s helped many others,

helped Maurice’s uncle and all of his brothers,

when all of them found themselves in a tight pinch

and Miss Joy was ready to help in a cinch.

Miss Joy takes a ferry to go and see Mary,

with all of the thanks that a person can carry.

She’ll pay Mary back for all that she borrowed

when Miss Joy was lonely and drowning in sorrow.

Mary herself had some people to pay,

and one of these people was her old Aunt Kay.

Aunt Kay gave her money to pay for her rent

because Mary found that her money was spent.

Since Aunt Kay was also a one in the red,

she went down the docks and she found Captain Ted.

The captain had given her five hundred dollars

so Aunt Kay could answer her IRS callers.

The captain went down all the streets of his town,

looking to see if old Bob was around.

The captain had owed Bob a small sum of money

that Bob floated Ted on the Sound.

Bob took up the money and squared up with Peter,

who never once knew it had left his two-seater.

Bob re-placed the cash and was off in a dash—

his fleet feet had never been fleeter.

So what is the value of money?

What’s the appropriate call?

For these ten quartets have balanced ten debts,

and no one paid anything at all.

[luthienne]

Naomi Shihab Nye

[lord-nichron]

The room, a reflection, a desperate place, Holding secrets of his relentless chase.

Amidst the chaos, a figure in despair, A private sentinel in a rich man's snare.

His hands, a tale of deeds untold, In this crowded world, his sorrows unfold.

[usefulfictions]

on the value of storytelling;

Into the Water - Paula Hawkins // The Nutritionist - Andrea Gibson //  LIFE Magazine 1963 - James Baldwin // Anti-depressants are so not a big deal - Crazy Ex-Girlfriend // Nobel Prize Acceptance Speech 2017 - Kazuo Ishiguro // Invisible Planets - Hao Jingfang (tr. Ken Liu) // tumblr user @/poseidonsarmoury // Road to Hell (Reprise) - Hadestown // Letters to Milena - Franz Kafka // The Catcher in the Rye - J.D. Salinger // Exandria Unlimited: Calamity - Brennan Lee Mulligan

[wooftphr]

the creek just past the city limit

[arcanewonder]

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