by Deb Scott
We write poetry for lots of reasons, reasons as varied as every individual and every circumstance. Sometimes we communicate, connect, explain, cajole or invoke. Some people like to spin tales as entertainment. Many want to excavate or explore truth in one of its many forms, often as a gnarled, knuckled fact set in a specific place and time. Real. Concrete. Facts you can touch and carve your name into.
This week I suggest we try a different way to get at truth. Instead of examining facts, let’s explore fantasy. The fantasy of lies. The stuff of stories. Let’s play with truth and see what it tells us.
I’ve heard some advice about lying over the years, and some of it is contradictory. “If you’re going to tell a lie, make it a whopper.” “If you’re going to tell a lie, make it believable.” This week, you can go either way. Or both. (But I’m betting you’ll get more out of this exercise if you go where you are less comfortable.)
To get started, free-write for 10 minutes. Tell some outlandish lies, such as what fairy tales or myths or get-out-of-trouble stories are made of. Or fiddle and fool with small white lies that color a scene frothy instead of calm. Write for 10 minutes and then review. Don’t make any judgments. (This is only an exercise; you don’t have to tell your spouse, best friend, or therapist what you wrote.) Pull out one line, maybe two lines, that you want to explore. Now write a poem around that line or lines.
Here are a few ideas to get you started (or make up your own!):
- the day I photographed an extinct bird
- the time I saved the good-looking neighbor’s life
- the time the Dalai Lama and I made peach jam
I just know you have a great lie to tell — do it!
Go crazy in the privacy of your notebook. Then pick and choose a line or two and write a poem around it (or them) to share next week. (Have fun!) I can hardly wait to see where this experiment leads.
P.S. Funny how this prompt works so well with Ren Powell’s post this week. I hadn’t even seen her piece when writing mine.
Deb Scott is community and news director for Read Write Poem. In her other life, she plays with words, her pets, bugs and her husband, in a random but rotating order. She blogs at Stoney Moss.
Great prompt. The shape-shifting nature of truth has always intrigued me. Truth can be anything you want it to be. It’s a fluid as thin as water.
Deb Scott replied:
September 18th, 2009 at 9:10 pm
Glad you like the prompt. I’ve long been fascinated with “shape-shifting nature of truth,” too. Nice way to say it.
You may be my new hero. Truth is not my comfort zone.
Deb Scott replied:
September 18th, 2009 at 9:11 pm
Hero-schmero
… happy you like the prompt!
We were supposed to be telling the truth before now? Oops.
That Dalai Lama/peach jam one really rang in me. Though Archaeopteryx-watching has its appeal as well…
Deb Scott replied:
September 18th, 2009 at 9:11 pm
Haha! Weird what the subconscious brings, isn’t it? Enjoy.
I don’t mind telling big porkies if it’s obvious and transparent that I’m doing it e.g in humourous poetry which I mainly write for this site.
Deb Scott replied:
September 18th, 2009 at 9:12 pm
The fantastic is easier to lie about, isn’t it?
I’ve already written my “whopper haiku” — a variation on Basho’s famous “pond/frog/sound” haiku!
Deb Scott replied:
September 18th, 2009 at 9:12 pm
Fun!
Great idea for a prompt, Deb! I love the notion that a “fantasy of lies” is a good way to get at the truth.
Rallentanda replied:
September 18th, 2009 at 8:22 pm
Well I hope this is not right otherwise I’m going to have to change my poem
Deb Scott replied:
September 18th, 2009 at 9:15 pm
Enjoy the exercise, Rallentanda, and perhaps see if another version takes you another place.
Deb Scott replied:
September 18th, 2009 at 9:14 pm
Thanks, Nathan. I’m sure there’s a body of wisdom about how the notion, too. I wish I could go to school and make that some part of a dissertation
.
How cool! I am going to sit down and write for the prompt now!
Deb Scott replied:
September 19th, 2009 at 8:34 pm
Enjoy!
“Whopper”…like some huge hamburger….dam thats double hard for me…..a vegatarian who has never…but never told a fib or a lie in my entire 71 years…..now I not only have to eat a huge whopper of a hamburger….but tell as whopper lie… I don’t know if this is possible.
Deb Scott replied:
September 19th, 2009 at 8:35 pm
We want to challenge each other, but not traverse ground that breaks a personal moral boundary, Wayne. Do what is right for you.
This prompt works with the book I am reading at the moment, Sexing the Cherry, by Jeanette Winterson. If anyone hasn’t read it before, the book takes leaps of space and time and has magical elements so that it’s miles away from realism, and yet it gives the sense of particular details of exactness as well as mediates on its philosophy of reality. Maybe everyone else is familiar with this kind of writing, but it’s new to me, and it’s starting to free me up to do more “playing” in my writing, which is exactly where this prompt is also directing us. Thank you for the opportunity to break away not just from “how it really happened” but also from whether it happened at all.
Deb Scott replied:
September 20th, 2009 at 7:44 pm
Oooh. I love when circumstances collide, coalesce. (I’ve been wanting to read some Jeanette Winterson for a while — I think I’ll have to start here.)
Thank you for a shared enthusiasm!
A “whopper” of lies. That actually sounds very appetizing in a very mischievous way, of course.
Deb Scott replied:
September 20th, 2009 at 7:45 pm
Of course!
I took a swipe at this in my morning pages today and quickly wrote a poemlette that is the biggest whopper of all, in my book, in my words.
I don’t have the courage to post it yet.
And I want to ride the prompt out the way it was intended to be ridden out.
The power in the first words knocked my pencil right out of movement.
Deb Scott replied:
September 22nd, 2009 at 11:56 am
This thrills me, to read this. Thank you for trying it out.
I ended up writing about truth and speed. http://shimshonaword.wordpress.com/