Removing Abstracts Part Two: What We Can Learn from Poets Exercise

If you recall, last week I talked about language abstracts and trying to spruce up your writing by embracing elements of poetics. If you don’t recall, look here. My post was very rudimentary, but I think it got my point across. I also referenced this link.

As I am not a hypocrite and don’t like to ask people to do things I won’t (within reason of course), I did the exercise at the end of the linked blog I built my post off of.

These were the instructions I followed:

Look around you and write a description of what you see for five minutes. Then take another ten minutes to go through what you’ve written and replace any adjectives with verb phrases, metaphors, similes or allusions.

Here’s step one mixed with step two:

Here’s my final product in a legible format.

An olive chair sits angled to my right. Before is sits two Jersey’s and the cats’ Christmas gift. The TV, bolted to its stand on the glassy corner unit transports me beyond the house. An empty box bereft of cats finds solace with a shoe lace, three balls, and a flightless Percy. A metal urn that tings cheaply rests empty on the tile before the flameless fireplace. June’s extended warmth robs the structure of its usefulness. A glass vase, a quarter full of stones and a perpetually blooming dahlia and rose, hugs the other side of that ill-placed chair. The alarm clock beneath the TV shrieks in crimson. It’s time for bed.

My surroundings are not the least bit interesting by the way.

Anyhow, here’s what I took away from this exercise:

Knowing language intimately is a major prerequisite to thinking like a poet;
Knowing different literary devices and how to use them is elemental (I love anthropomorphization, apparent even in my small paragraph);
Having a strong grasp of pop culture, common names, vernacular, slang, etc. open more doors when playing with words;
Staying away from tropes and clichés is hard;
I am not a poet.

Overall my experience was constructive and informative. I need to remind myself during the editing process that words are gems and I need to make them shine more. Did anyone else take up the challenge?

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