Workshop: Discover
Words That Sing
“It’s impossible to teach anyone to write a poem. But we can set
up circumstances in which poems are likely to happen. We can create a field in
and around us that’s fertile territory for poems. Playing with words, we can
get to the place where poems come from. We can write and make discoveries about
who we are and who we might become whether or not we truly commit ourselves to
becoming poets.” Susan Goldsmith
Wooldridge.
A good example of how these metaphoric concepts
working across age and culture to enrich emotional resonance and discovery can
be found in The Listening Silence,
by Phyllis Root. The prologue sets the character, the theme, and the atmosphere
for this story through three metaphoric connections: within, the whiteness, and the song. By anchoring these images
in the prologue, rather than by introducing them in flashbacks during the
narrative, the author sets up reader identification with Kiri immediately, and
catches the reader up into the story’s movement without slowing the pace later
to offer background explanation.
In the prologue Kiri is a five-year-old left in
her tent alone while her mother searches for the missing father during winter.
Kiri’s mind drifts until she goes beyond her tent into the korlu where she
hears crying. Then from within the
korlu, she sees the white snow, the frozen lake, and the trees. Hearing an
animal outside the tent, she goes within,
hoping to see her parent’s tracks. She goes within her mother when she calls and feels her death.
When the narrative resumes eight years later the
reader recognizes that this ability to go within is a part of Kiri’s character. She makes decisions and
choices for herself based on her willingness to go within or not. She is willing to go inside animals and nature
but resists people. There is too much pain there and her fears stop her. To go within people can bring healing and
Kiri struggles with herself to become a ‘Healer’. It is an integral part of her
character, but her resistance to who she is sets the conflict. Because of the
connection the reader made with Kiri as a five year old, the reader can see and
feel and understand along with Kiri as she tries to balance a five-year-old’s
understanding with the approach of adulthood.
Her character is one of Healer and she
recognizes that in the end. When it matters most she goes past her own personal
fears, first to heal a wolken, then Garen, of whom she has always been afraid,
and through healing them by going within to
meet their needs, she finds her own peace and acceptance of who she is.
“She could not go within to heal him. Something
waited for her there, something that knew her name. And suddenly there was
stillness……..but here, at the center, was a quiet as vast and white as winter. Here
within Garen, beyond that edge of his pain, was the place of healing that Mali
had told her about.” The Listening Silence
Action Steps:
1. How might you use the metaphor of “within” to
translate to your own character’s emotional core?
2. How can you translate it into a thread
metaphor for your story?
Share: What do you see as an integral metaphor
as a part of your character?
Read deep, marcy
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