Memoir as Poetry

 I am currently exploring the notion of using poetry as a form of memoir writing. My natural poetic style is the narrative form or flow of consciousness. I make no pretence at rhyme, rhythm or meter, although it is surprising how all those elements can appear in my writing. I have posted two poems on my Poetry Blog - Verse and Words. At the moment I visualise mixing the poetic form with conventional writing.

In the beginning ... Poetry

I apologise for cutting and pasting this interesting extract from The Cultural Tutor  Areopagus Volume LXII but I thought it was an interesting post for those on the periphery of Poetry, like myself who have yet to immerse themselves in the real world of mainstream Poetry. My thanks to the author who produces one of the most interesting websites and X (nee Twitter) threads, The Cultural Tutor and Twitter.

VI - Writing

In the beginning...

I have gathered here, for your perusal, the opening lines of several of history's most famous epic poems. Read them — not forgetting to enjoy and admire them, of course — and see if you can tell what they all have in common:

The Iliad of Homer

Sing, O goddess, the anger of Achilles son of Peleus, that brought countless ills upon the Achaeans.

The Odyssey of Homer

Tell me, O muse, of that ingenious hero who travelled far and wide after he had sacked the famous town of Troy. Many cities did he visit, and many were the nations with whose manners and customs he was acquainted; moreover he suffered much by sea while trying to save his own life and bring his men safely home; but do what he might he could not save his men, for they perished through their own sheer folly in eating the cattle of the Sun-god Hyperion; so the god prevented them from ever reaching home

The Aeneid of Virgil

Arms, and the man I sing, who, forc’d by fate,
And haughty Juno’s unrelenting hate,
Expell’d and exil’d, left the Trojan shore.
Long labours, both by sea and land, he bore,
And in the doubtful war, before he won
The Latian realm, and built the destin’d town...

Orlando Furioso by Ludovico Ariosto

Of ladies, knights, of passions and of wars,
of courtliness, and of valiant deeds I sing.

The Lusiads by Luís Vaz de Camões

Arms and the Heroes, who from Lisbon's shore,
Thro' seas where sail was never spread before,
Beyond where Ceylon lifts her spicy breast,
And waves her woods above the wat'ry waste,
With prowess more than human forc'd their way
To the fair kingdoms of the rising day:
What wars they wag'd, what seas, what dangers pass'd,
What glorious empire crown'd their toils at last,
Vent'rous I sing, on soaring pinions borne,
And all my country's wars the song adorn...

Jerusalem Delivered by Torquato Tasso

The sacred armies, and the godly knight,
That the great sepulchre of Christ did free,
I sing...

The Faerie Queene by Edmund Spenser

Lo I the man, whose Muse whilome did maske,
As time her taught, in lowly Shepheards weeds,
Am now enforst a far unfitter taske,
For trumpets sterne to chaunge mine Oaten reeds,
And sing of Knights and Ladies gentle deeds;
Whose prayses having slept in silence long,
Me, all too meane, the sacred Muse areeds
To blazon broade emongst her learned throng:
Fierce warres and faithfull loves shall moralize my song.

Paradise Lost by John Milton

Of Man’s first disobedience, and the fruit
Of that forbidden tree whose mortal taste
Brought death into the World, and all our woe,
With loss of Eden, till one greater Man
Restore us, and regain the blissful seat,
Sing, Heavenly Muse...

Paradise Regained by John Milton

I, who erewhile the happy Garden sung
By one man’s disobedience lost, now sing
Recovered Paradise to all mankind,
By one man’s firm obedience fully tried
Through all temptation, and the Tempter foiled
In all his wiles, defeated and repulsed,
And Eden raised in the waste Wilderness.

So, what do these opening lines all have in common? There are certain models you can probably detect which, once established, were imitated, whether Virgil's original arms and the man I sing or some sort of Homeric invocation to the muses. But, in all cases, the connection is deeper and much simpler. In every example of epic poetry given here, the poet wastes no time telling you exactly what the poem shall be about, and usually in very direct language. Shakespeare did the same thing at the outset of Romeo and Juliet:
Two households, both alike in dignity,
In fair Verona, where we lay our scene,
From ancient grudge break to new mutiny,
Where civil blood makes civil hands unclean.
From forth the fatal loins of these two foes
A pair of star-cross'd lovers take their life;

The reason I share all this is not only out of some scholarly interest. Rather, it's an important reminder not to fail to see the wood for the trees when we begin to write something. Tell the reader what they are about to read. Not all epic poems begin in this way, but the fact that many of them do should not be forgotten. Because, for all their length and complexity, their myriad characters and numerous plot-lines, the poet is in each case focussing on a single event or circumstance or theme, to which everything else is subsidiary. This clarity of intention cannot be underestimated. For if we begin with a single, simple intention in mind, and however complex the task becomes let it always be our north star, then we shall be surer of success and of creating something good than if we set out without a clear notion of where we are going. So, you see, these directly stated opening lines are for the poet as much as the reader. Any writer, of any sort of material, stands to gain by bearing this simple truth in mind.

Textise

Textise

Textise is a new way of looking at the Web. It’s an Internet tool that removes everything from a web page except for its text. Try it here - https://www.textise.net/

In practice, this means that images, forms, scripts, pretty fonts, they all go, leaving plain text. What’s really cool, though, is that links are retained, although these are no ordinary links: click one and you’re transported to another text-only page, and that page leads to another, and another, and another… You stay in Textise’s world until you click the “Back To Original Page” link.

An interesting feature of Textise is that by using it you can by-pass Pay-walls on subscription-only pages such as Newspapers, Journals etc. A bonus for destitute students and probably highly illegal.

• It can improve accessibility for the blind and partially-sighted.
• It creates pages that are better for printing when it’s just the words you’re after.
• It allows safer navigation to suspicious web-sites.
• It can make cluttered pages easier to read.
• It can show you what a search engine sees when it scans a web page – great for SEO!
• It can show you what a screen reader sees when it processes a web page – great for ensuring accessibility!
• It can help with web research.

The page that shows up in your browser looks a bit odd because it is Text Only, with as it say, all images, colours and other embellishments removed. You may need to scroll down the page to find what you are looking for. A convenient way to improve the reading experience is the copy the text you want by selecting it and then copying using Control-C and then pasting it into a text reader like Google.Docs, OneNote or Notepad using Control-V.

Source: https://textise.wordpress.com/about-textise/

Scribblings #6

 If you are looking for Scribblings #5 I apologise, that post has been deleted.

ChatGPT and AI: Creating Magical Bedtime Stories for Kids — Part 1

A Step-by-Step Guide to Writing, Cover Designing, and Publishing a Children’s Storybook with Artificial Intelligence on Your Side
https://clydedz.medium.com/chatgpt-and-ai-creating-magical-bedtime-stories-for-kids-part-1-7a25566509e1

Writing a Memoir: How to Craft a Compelling Story

This is one of the better articles that I have found on the subject of Memoir.

·         Writing a memoir is all about learning how to tell a compelling story based on a real-life story structure that took place, but in a way that attracts the reader's attention.

https://theurbanwriters.com/blogs/publishing/writing-a-memoir

StrikeTheWriteTone.Com

This blog contains some of the best advice I have found on Memoir writing. Check out the various posts on the subject.

·        A memoir is not the recounting of stuff that happened to you. Stuff happens to everybody. A proper memoir must contain reflection. . . . No meaning, no memoir. No transcendence, no memoir. No takeaway for the reader, no memoir.

https://www.strikethewritetone.com/blog

Blogs

Visit my Blogs at – apmablog.blogspot.com  and verseandwords.blogspot.com

Algospeak

 As an old codger there are aspects of modern life that do not touch me. Listening to the Podcast The Digital Human, Series 29, the episode titled Dialogue. I had the scales removed from my eyes concerning an aspect of modern life that I have endeavored to avoid. The world of TikTok and similar fringe areas of Social Media. Aleks Krotoski in this episode discusses how Algorithms control the Dialogue on social media and how various marginal groups have developed their own form of dialogue to circumvent the demands of the Advertisers to exclude certain words, phrases and forms of communication. AI  censorship is being circumvented by the use of ingeniously composed hash tags and forms of code in what is described as Algospeak. 

Unconventional Memoir's

Generally speaking, the format of most memoirs is fairly predictable. In view of the conversation and advice offered at the Creative Creating Group I participate in, which is to stick to the conventional approach of beginning, middle and end. I knew that there were Memoirs out there that didn't comply with this convention. It set me wondering what was out there in the way of unconventional memoir formats.  I was not disappointed. A quick search revealed the usual plethora of 23 Best Unconventional Memoirs and 10 Of the most unusual Memoirs.  

One that caught my eye was Childhood by Nathalie Sarraute. A strange, rather haunting memoir written when the author was 83 years old. It looks back on her first ten years of life. The memoir takes the form of a conversation between her and her memory and the ensuing dialogue.

Excerpt

CHILDHOOD 

-Then you really are going to do that? "Evoke your childhood 

memories" .... How these words embarrass you, you don't like 

them. But you have to admit that they are the only appropriate 

words. You want to "evoke your memories" ... there's no getting 

away from it, that's what it is. 

-Yes, I can't help it, it tempts me, I don't know why... 

-It could be ... mightn't it be ... we sometimes don't realize ... 

it could be that your forces are declining... 

-No, I don't think so... at least I don't feel they are .. 

-And yet what you want to do ... "to evoke your memories" . 

mightn't that be ... 

-Oh, for heaven's sake ... 

-Yes, the question has to be asked: wouldn't that mean that 

you were retiring? standing aside? abandoning your element, in 

which up to now, as best you could.. 

-Yes, as you say, as best I could . 

-Perhaps, but it's the only one you have ever been able to live 

in. the one . 

-Oh, what's the use? I know all about that. 

For further examples explore these links Powells.com Goodreads.com

Finding Public Domain Material

 There are a number of terrific resources out there that provide public-domain content. Consider the following:

• Project Gutenberg: This site has over 60,000 public domain ebooks. And it is by far the best resource on this list. If you can't find the public domain title here, there is a much lesser chance of finding it elsewhere, with a few exceptions. It's also where I get most of my public-domain books.
• Archive.org: Another great resource with tens of thousands of public domain books, as well as a lot of other material, including magazine scans, films, audio, and more. This is where I have gotten a lot of things like original scans of a book or magazine.
• Sacred Texts: This is a site that specializes in religious works of a wide variety of religions. It's one of the best resources for public domain works that are religiously based.
• LibriVox: This isn't for ebooks or print, but does contain audiobooks of a lot of classic public domain books. While you can't go and upload these to ACX, you can include them as bonus material on your website, or in other creative ways.
• Authorama: Authorama is a site that focuses on the greatest authors throughout history. It's a good place to get the classics.
• Classic Literature Library: This site partners with Project Gutenberg but is notable for having great collections of public domain works, particularly by the more popular authors.
• Google Search: You’re likely to find what you’re looking for with the above resources, but if not, there are many other, sometimes genre specific, resources that are a Google search away. To do this well, I recommend searching for the work you're looking for, then adding something like “full text” or “PDF” to the end of your search. If you don't see it come up anywhere, then it likely doesn't exist in a digitized form. But don't necessarily let that stop you. If there's demand for the work, you could have it transcribed and make it available yourself!