{"id":2152,"date":"2010-07-16T17:00:43","date_gmt":"2010-07-16T21:00:43","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/lanternreview.com\/blog\/?p=2152"},"modified":"2010-07-15T11:50:07","modified_gmt":"2010-07-15T15:50:07","slug":"weekly-prompt-playing-with-perspective","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lanternreview.com\/blog\/2010\/07\/16\/weekly-prompt-playing-with-perspective\/","title":{"rendered":"Weekly Prompt: Playing With Perspective"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

So you\u2019re drafting a poem and nothing seems to be working.\u00a0 Fifth draft, sixth draft\u2026\u00a0 the language drags, the images remain hackneyed.\u00a0 But here\u2019s a thought: have you considered experimenting with point of view?<\/p>\n

Though this is something you probably had to do in middle school, I\u2019ve actually found that shifting the narrative center of a poem (unless, of course, you\u2019re not working<\/em> with a narrative center, in which case you\u2019ll just have to keep on drafting) can bring new energy to a drafting process gone slack.<\/p>\n

I wouldn\u2019t recommend doing this too early in the process \u2013 I\u2019ve come to think of this \u201ctrick\u201d as something of a last resort, like when I\u2019ve done all I can to work through a poem and still don\u2019t feel it\u2019s arrived.\u00a0 For example, earlier this week I was working on a fairly straightforward poem about a family in a hospital watching their dying father take communion: the wife waited, the child sat.\u00a0 The chaplain poured the grape juice.\u00a0 The chaplain blessed the grape juice.\u00a0 The chaplain passed the grape juice.<\/p>\n

Things were getting a little boring.\u00a0 So I switched it up and forced the narrative into a second person point of view.\u00a0 All at once, it wasn\u2019t \u201cthe man dying,\u201d but you<\/em>.\u00a0 And you <\/em>were dying.\u00a0 Working through the poem with this fresh perspective forced much of the material (about half the lines, I\u2019d say) from the narrative, but also demanded that certain details be added.\u00a0 What do \u201cyou\u201d hear when you\u2019re at death\u2019s door?\u00a0 How do \u201cyou\u201d perceive your family?<\/p>\n

Whether or not you stick with the perspective switch after you\u2019re done with the exercise, hopefully you\u2019ll find that this has forced you to write toward a different set of expectations and demands.\u00a0 Work to make the individual versions as distinctive as possible, and have fun!<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

So you\u2019re drafting a poem and nothing seems to be working.\u00a0 Fifth draft, sixth draft\u2026\u00a0 the language drags, the images remain hackneyed.\u00a0 But here\u2019s a thought: have you considered experimenting with point of view? Though this is something you probably had to do in middle school, I\u2019ve actually found that shifting the narrative center of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0},"categories":[13],"tags":[1048,365,346,71],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lanternreview.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2152"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lanternreview.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lanternreview.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lanternreview.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lanternreview.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2152"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/www.lanternreview.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2152\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2233,"href":"https:\/\/www.lanternreview.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2152\/revisions\/2233"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lanternreview.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2152"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lanternreview.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2152"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lanternreview.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2152"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}