HOWL - A New Generation of Writing Minds

Dangerously Making Waves

2006-09-28T00:01:00.000-06:00

This stumbled Howl's way -

Young Irish Poet dangerously making waves

Blurb from Billy Collins: "What is remarkable about Leanne O'Sullivan is not that she is so young--how many of us reach 20 without attempting a poem?--but that she dares to write about exactly what it is to be young. A teenage Virgil, she guides us down some of the more hellish corridors of adolescence with a voice that is strong and true. For that alone, she deserves our full attention."

A Map of the World

I remember this woman
who'd sit for hours in the TV room,
staring through the window at the days
and nights, her winged arm hanging over the sill as if she were in a car travelling at a great speed. Once, after I was forbidden to walk on the grass, I sat beside her in a shaft of sunlight as she told me how she had loved the silk shawl of her garden back home, walking barefoot there at night. Then she took my hand in hers, the way you would touch a flower, and slowly traced each line of my life, her fingers moving upwards like blood from my vein, to the hollows of love in my palm. I felt myself come alive with her touch, as if continents were pulling together inside me, the core fluid with tremendous magma. My hand, a landscape of earth; I walked it, caressed the map which felt like birth, death, heaven on earth, the heat of hell, the blue stems like labyrinths under a valley of flesh. I was the ocean orbiting the shore, a drowned man kissing the land, surrounded by that strange smell of air. How to move, I was not sure, my feet spread on the ground like roots. I leaned forward to kiss this woman's eye and stood up, taking my first step towards something that would survive me.

Ghosts - Leanne O Sullivan

2006-09-27T23:56:00.000-06:00

Staring, with sheets covering
their faces, the ghosts stand
like a hive of mirrors.
You lie on a stone pillow and dread
the vision of them. One by one
they remember everything backwards.
One looks like your cold lover,
one like a bottle of sleeping pills
begging for the terrible need,
another stuns like a blade
piercing the numb surface of flesh,
shaving pores on the bone.
Terror flaps in the night wind.
They feed and drink on those howls,
claiming the screams they stare down.
Skin flickers in those horrible
cut-out eyes, where the living body
is carried back to place and time,
to the moment when a memory
was made with lead, when the first
taste of grief stuck in your throat.
As you build a table for new meals,
the ghosts wait for the time
when they can follow the tree-rings
back to the season of felling.

Motion Sickness - Setting in Short Story

2006-09-10T21:29:00.000-06:00

Further to Forgetting Your Characters’ Names, we can only have a limited number of settings in the short story . We do not have space for more. If we are shifting around too much, travel sickness will ensue. The novel can cope, size wise, with much more settings. Just something to keep in mind. The whole fiction thing works on scene. It is the basic building block of narrative. Scene: characters in a particular setting with some action. So consider your settings carefully. They are limited and precious. Make sure the setting compliments the purpose of the scene. Don’t just stick your characters in any old place. Put them somewhere where it counts, adds atmosphere, evokes the emotion of the scene.
In the novel, we have more time to travel. More pages and more locations. But travel wisely. There are a lot of dangers in the world out there.

Forgetting Your Characters' names - Differences between the Short Story and the Novel

2006-09-10T20:38:00.000-06:00

Here’s the thing. Howl loves the short story form even though he describes it as the ‘little thing’ (see The Little Thing that Rubs Up Against the Big Thing). Indeed Howl thinks it is quite the perfect form. And in itself can reveal a lot about human nature.

However, let us look at character for a moment. In fiction character is where we are located. It is through observing the characters actions and, most importantly, reactions that we discover things about ourselves.

But there’s the question: If you meet someone for an hour or for a complete day, which would allow you to know the person better? How about a day or a month:? A month or a year? Twenty years?

We are rich complex people. It takes a lot of time to get to know us well.
First appearances can be false.
The novel has more space to spend time with people, to get to know them better and as a result to get to know ourselves better.

This does not imply that the novel is better than the short story - just different. A collection of short stories can be as rich and complex as a novel.

The constraints of the short story means that ‘usually’ the action takes place over a day or two. Sure there are exceptions but generally speaking it is over a short period of time - not enough pages to describe much more. So we focus on one main incident in a short period of time and watch how the character is affected and what is revealed or not to him or her.

The novel brings us through a longer period of time, a wider range of incidents, a larger canvas to observe the reactions to these events.

The point is that there are differences between the forms, and we need to be aware of this. Introducing too many characters in a short story is like being introduced to a whole bunch of people all at once. We forget their names, we don’t get a chance to meet any of them for any length of time.

Irish poets 101

2006-08-29T23:51:00.000-06:00

If you are unable to name this poet in five seconds, the you need to enroll In Irish Poets 101.

Use comments section below.

Mexico City Blues

2006-08-29T23:45:00.000-06:00

Jack Kerouac from Mexico City Blues
211th Chorus

The wheel of the quivering meat conception
Turns in the void expelling human beings,
Pigs, turtles, frogs, insects, nits
Mice, lice, lizards, rats, roan
Racinghorses, poxy bucolic pigtics,
Horrible unnameable lice of vultures
Murderous attacking dog-armies
Of Africa, Rhinos roaming in the jungle,

Vast boars and huge gigantic bull
Elephants, rams, eagles, condors,
Pones and Porcupines and Pills –
All the endless conception of living beings
Gnashing everywhere in Consciousness
Throughout the ten directions of space
Occupying all the quarters in & out,
From supermicroscopic no-bug
To huge Galaxy Lightyear Bowell
Illuminating the sky of one Mind –
Poor! I wish I was free
Of that slaving meat wheel
And safe in heaven dead

Don Quixote - The Finest Road Novel of Them All

2006-08-17T13:47:00.000-06:00

Now young Howlers, have you been reading your classics?

Shame if you haven't? Who wrote the first road novel?

No, not Kerouac, you illiterate wanna bes, Cervantes did of course.

Who Howl? I hear you cry. And truthfully it makes me want to cry.

Read your classics. Read the finest road novel of them all - Don Quixote

Enlightening the Dalai Lama

2006-08-17T11:02:00.000-06:00

Synder was never really one of the Beats - he just hung out with them a while nevertheless The Beatiest of them all, Jack Kerouac, wrote this in his novel The Dharma Bums describing Snyders decision to move to Japan:
:
"...His business was with the Dharma. And the freighter sailed away out the Golden Gate and out to the deep swells of the gray Pacific, westward across. Psyche cried, Sean cried, everybody felt sad.

Warren Coughlin said "Too bad, he'll probably disappear into Central Asia marching about on a quiet but steady round from Kahgar to Lanchow via Lhasa with a string of yaks selling popcorn, safety-pins, and assorted colors of sewing-thread and occasionally climb a Himalaya and end up enlightening the Dalai Lama and all the gang for miles around and never be heard of again."

Don't you just love it? - Howl does anyway.

Keep track of the names - it's all in your education

Literature and Wilderness Thought

2006-08-17T10:58:00.000-06:00

Okay so who is the Stray Cat Gary Snyder and why am I posting his poetry. Well Glyn Maxwell has a few words that put him in perspective. Read on my fellow cat lovers:

"Snyder was born in San Francisco, and brought up in Oregon and Washington State. He received his BA in anthropology at Reed College, Portland, in 1951. His subsequent career has been a remarkable combination of the academic and the contemplative, spiritual study and physical labour. Between working as a logger, a trail-crew member, and a seaman on a Pacific tanker, he studied Oriental languages at Berkeley (1953-6), was associated with Beat writers such as Ginsberg and Kerouac, lived in Japan (1956-64), later studied Buddhism there, and won numerous literary prizes, including a Guggenheim fellowship (1968) and the Pulitzer Prize (1975). He now teaches literature and 'wilderness thought' at the University of California at Davis.
The shapes and strengths of Gary Snyder's craft were established at the outset of his career. His first book, Riprap (Kyoto, 1959), demonstrates the clarity of his seeing, his desire to crystalize moments, his striking ability to convey the physical nature of an instant: 'I cannot remember things I once read / A few friends, but they are in cities. / Drinking cold snow-water from a tin cup / Looking down for miles / Through high still air' ('Mid-August at Sourdough Mountain Lookout'). Simplicity, distance, accuracy of atmosphere: these are hallmarks of the work throughout. The laid-back, jotted-down tone masks an acute sensitivity to rhythm and, in particular, assonance. Though his formal spectrum is narrow, from terse, rhythmic observation with a resonant conclusion ('I feel ancient, as though I had / Lived many lives', 'An Autumn Morning in Shokoku-ji') to lengthy, free-associative odysseys through the American 'back country’, his territory is vast, and his resources of phrase and juxtaposition seemingly endless. Such a ranging strategy does not always pan gold from the water, but when it does Snyder comes face to face with a wide, gladdening openness, or touches wellsprings of healing profundity."

A course on Wilderness Thought - sign Howl up.

The Edge of Light

2006-08-17T10:50:00.000-06:00

Another from the wise one, Mr Snyder.

How Poetry comes To Me

It comes blundering over the
Boulders at night, it stays
Frightened outside the
Range of my campfire
I go to meet it at the
Edge of the light

Another Stray Cat

2006-08-14T23:35:00.000-06:00

Another one of those alley cats. Although he soon cleaned up his act swapping Sand Francisco for Japan and a zen way of life.

This is Hay for the Horses by Gary Snyder.

He had driven half the night
From far down San Joaquin
Through Mariposa, up the
Dangerous Mountain roads,
And pulled in at eight a.m.
With his big truckload of hay
behind the barn.
With winch and ropes and hooks
We stacked the bales up clean
To splintery redwood rafters
High in the dark, flecks of alfalfa
Whirling through shingle-cracks of light,
Itch of haydust in the
sweaty shirt and shoes.
At lunchtime under Black oak
Out in the hot corral,
---The old mare nosing lunchpails,
Grasshoppers crackling in the weeds---
"I'm sixty-eight" he said,
"I first bucked hay when I was seventeen.
I thought, that day I started,
I sure would hate to do this all my life.
And dammit, that's just what
I've gone and done."

The Art of Lacing Your Shoes

2006-08-14T22:59:00.000-06:00

With all this talk on big things and little things, it’s good to keep something straightforward in mind. The big thing is usually made up of a group of smaller things, and if you can’t manage the small things there is little likelihood of the big thing succeeding.

Let me put it more simply. Make sure you know how to write a short story before you attempt the novel. I really mean this. It is a rare exception that someone can sit down and write a novel without having learned the techniques necessary through first writing shorter pieces of fiction. It would be like going out to run a marathon without ever having run before. Something’s got to rupture. Aghs and ughs to follow.

It makes sense doesn’t it? The correct answer, by the way, is, “Yes, Mr. Howl.”
So master the short story first. And this is going to take some time. But there is no rush. People run marathons into their eighties. So get your running shoes on, and I’ll teach you how to lace them up.

Howlagrams #1

2006-08-11T14:37:00.000-06:00

Howlagrams are useful pieces of writing advice which need to be solved. Please forward your solutions in the comments section.

#1. There is no such thing as a born-writer. This misconception grew from a missing ‘I’ and ‘g’.

The Big Thing With Far More Pages

2006-08-11T11:13:00.000-06:00

So have you been wonderful? Remember James’…oops…I mean Rowlings great quote. Big things, little things and all that (The Little Thing that Rubs Up Against the Big Thing) So what makes the novel the big thing. Well pick it up in your hand and you will find out. Yeah it weighs heavier than the short story. Why? It’s got more pages.

Oh for Heaven’s sake, Howl, what do you think we are, imbeciles? You think we couldn’t have figured that out on our own?

Don’t be so touchy. And by the way, Mr. Howl to you.

Sure it’s obvious, but a lot of writers forget this important fact - that good writing is created from very obvious steps. Sometimes there is an illusion that ‘important’ writing is complicated, perhaps even hard to understand. Think Ulysses for instance, Old Mr. Joyce ( a fine Irish countryman by the way) - stream of consciousness and all that, you know one sentence following the other in a sort of random chaotic order linked by tenuous thoughts - the way our mind flicks from one idea to another - or more to the point think one of Howl’s old friends, that infamous beat writer Jack Kerouac and his cult novel On The Road - written in three days on a continuous sheet of paper - hmm!

Howl goes “Hmm”.

James and Jack, can’t you hear them yakking it up in a bar together? Anyway, you can bet your ipod that Mr. Joyce did not churn it out in three days or that there was no logic to his great work. And likewise I don’t believe the myth of Kerouac either. There is a sincere logic at work.
Their books while rich with complexity are not complicated.

Aren’t you getting a little confused her, Mr. Howl?

Not at all. These books have a clear logic and follow some basic guidelines. It is the logic that allows us entry to the story. But we are getting to far ahead of ourselves. I will try and simplify that another day.

The point is that there is no excuse for putting any old sentences together in some incomprehensible way and saying to the confused reader, “well you just don’t get it, that’s not my fault.” It is your fault and nothing short of it.

Back to the novel. Its large number of pages is of great importance. This means we have more room for each of the main elements of fiction: Characters, setting, plot. We can have more characters in a novel than in a short story. We can have a wider range of settings or locations that the story takes place in. We can have more events taking place (plot=sequence of events) since we have more time. The short story is limited. Less time, less events, less characters, less settings. In the novel therefore we gain complesity from having space for sub plots, from secondary characters and more actions/events to occurr to learn more about the character’s reactions.

Whew! A lot to absorb in all of that. I’ll break it down in future posts, make the logic clear and it all should become quite simple to understand.

The Little Thing that Rubs Up Against the Big Thing

2006-08-11T10:46:00.000-06:00

I’ve been a way a while. Sartori, let’s call it. But that being said, you don’t get away from writing, and so I am going to return to a question from Poetry, Fiction, Non-Fiction and Other Blunt Objects. What is the difference between a short story and a novel? You were supposed to be thinking about it already. Even if you hadn’t read my post (shame on you) if you want to be a writer, you need to be posing these questions to yourself.

So what is the difference between a short story and a novel?

I think this one is accredited to Henry James (but then which literary quote is not?). By the way you are familiar with James are you not, or has contemporary life left him far behind? In case it has, why don’t I just say this quote is accredited to Douglas Copeland. Oh for heavens sake, J.K. Rowling. Now are you happy?

Anyway here it goes: “The novel is the big thing and the short story is the little thing that rubs up against the big thing.”

Ponder on it, and I will return.

Poetry and The Artful Dodger

2006-07-16T00:48:00.000-06:00

So here we are in Metalworking manufacturing the perfect cosh, I mean, poem. Something to hit your audience over the head with to achieve monetary gain.

You have got to be able to hold the poem in your hand. But at the same time it had got to be dense enough to knock your victim out with.

Harder said than down.

So density of language - it’s gotta hurt

Lines instead of sentences - pauses where the victim goes ugh! and Agh!

Metaphor - you are saying one thing but hitting them over the head with another

Rhythm and Rhyme - Swing softly above your head and swoop low

We will go into this with more detail soon. I learned everything I know from the Artful dodger

Poetry - the Science of the Cosh

2006-07-16T00:26:00.000-06:00

To begin with let us hit ourselves over the head with a poem.
Weigh it up. How heavy will the blow be?

You listened in your physics class didn’t you. Yes that’s right, physics not English Literature (actually I am not sure what you call it now, but we just called in English. English class - all encompassing. By God we knew what that meant. Shakespeare, Yeats, John Donne, and a composition. I didn’t even know about the five paragraphs. A composition - fantastic word - maybe life was rosy in those days after all.)

Anyway, the physics of poetry - how heavy will the blow be - well that depends on density.
There you have it folks. The poem is supposed to be the big heavy lump of metal. Kind of like a cosh. You know, all concentrated for maximum effect. Whack!

Thing is, there is a science to the cosh too. Too light and it has little effect. Too heavy and you can’t get the proper swing. God bless us but they taught us the works at St Pats in Cavan. So you want to be a poet. Swing the cosh and not just any old cosh, but a cosh of perfect distribution.

How do you make such a thing? Well not in English class for sure, but maybe Metalworking. I was too academic for that in St Pats, didn’t even get the choice.

Accounting or Woodwork, English or Metalworking.

(More in a while)

Never Too Young to Shave

2006-07-14T23:57:00.000-06:00

Okay, maybe it should have been this one.

Cut While Shaving

It's never quite right, he said, the way people look,
the way the music sounds, the way the words are
written.
It's never quite right, he said, all the things we are
taught, all the loves we chase, all the deaths we
die, all the lives we live,
they are never quite right,
they are hardly close to right,
these lives we live
one after the other,
piled there as history,
the waste of the species,
the crushing of the light and the way,
it's not quite right,
it's hardly right at all
he said.

don't I know it? I
answered.

I walked away from the mirror.
it was morning, it was afternoon, it was
night

nothing changed
it was locked in place.
something flashed, something broke, something
remained.

I walked down the stairway and
into it.

by Charles Bukowski

Don't give up on me. All of this is leading somewhere. Your writing will be the better for it eventually. Your shaving skills will be even more impressive.

Surviving the Things on our Minds

2006-07-14T23:44:00.000-06:00

I want to come back to the questions of the previous post, Poetry, Fiction, Non-Fiction and Other Blunt Objects in a moment, but before any of that what you really need right now more than anything is a poem. Trust me. None of your namby pamby stuff here, no outdated (by a couple of centuries) school curriculum, nothing to shock the socks of your mother too much either, just a darn decent poem that fills the void other poems leave behind.

Survivor

Everyday,
I think about dying.
About disease, starvation,
violence, terrorism, war,
the end of the world.
It helps
keep my mind off things.

By Roger McGough

I really like this. Forget poetic structure and all those nasty things for a moment, think about what he is saying. Open up the newspaper, listen to the radio, the television, read the headlines on the internet, but hey we’ve got things to do today, right? We’ve got poems to write after all.

Poetry, Fiction, Non-Fiction and Other Blunt Objects

2006-07-14T23:09:00.000-06:00

So to begin, I have to ask the question, what is it you write? I don’t know the answer to that, and most probably you don’t either. Oh, you may think you know, but don’t be fooled by that. Anyway we will figure that out later.

There are some labels we use, which I guess could be considered useful: poetry for one, fiction, non-fiction are others.

If we were to go with these, and why not since labels are how we begin making do, but we will dispense with these when the need arises.

So what is the difference between a poem and a short story? What is the difference between a short story and a novel? What is the difference between fiction and non-fiction?

Easy questions. Tough answers. Think about it a while. I mean really think about it. Don’t just say, “oh well everybody knows that” and move on. Stop yourself in your tracks. Ask the question. I know you know, but I bet you don’t know.

The best way to approach it is to return to basics. Look at a poem in a book, look at a short story. Look at a short story, look at a novel. Begin with the obvious things you notice no matter how foolish they appear since the answer(s) to these questions lies here.

Which would you rather be hit over the head with - a poem, a short story or a novel?

Alley Cats - The Art of Survival in Writing

2006-07-14T22:27:00.000-06:00

So of the three alley cats do you recognise any?

The cat in the middle is Bob Dylan. The cat on the right is our man Allen Ginsberg who wrote the infamous poem the title of this blog has come from, Howl. The other mee-ow is Michael McClure. Enough in your education for now.

The point is that Dylan was hanging out with the poets, and the poets were hanging out with Dylan, and words were changing everything including the Times. The writing came from the heart.

It was not determined by marketing departments or authoritarian figures but from the self. It is very hard to write from the self nowadays. I think it always was. But particularly now people want writers to be celebrities and writers often want to be perceived as celebrities.

The first secret in writing well is to resist this. Ignore trends and multimedia advertising. Write what you want to write in the word you choose and stray up the alley with all those other cats if that be the consequences. Eat your dinners out of trash cans, wash beneath fire hydrants.
Be true to yourself. It will be its own reward. And I promise you, it will lead you to greater success that a brief period of time under the intense heat of some bright studio lights that will eventually pale, flicker out and die.

Learning how to Howl

2006-07-14T22:22:00.000-06:00

Okay young writers out there, this is it. It is your time to create or destroy your minds. I, for my part, if you are interested, will do my best to encourage both your minds and your writing to achieve the best of your potential.

You are the writers of the future. You are the ones whose books will sit upon library and bookshop shelves, that will be read in school and at home.

Through this blog I will offer advice and encouragement. I will attempt to remember my ‘younger days’ - how it felt to write in the early stages. Times are different, I am not ignorant of this, but the challenges of writing have really not changed. There are some processes which all great writers employ. I will hopefully outline these in a way you can understand and learn from.
I can answer your questions, your queries. I can stand firm under the barrage of your anger if necessary.

This is new territory. I have worked a lot with young writers in the past through workshops in school and in the community. I have even been a writer in residence at a school in Ireland for a school year. But this is the first time I have put keyboard to screen to work with an anonymous, faceless, cyber gathering - if there is a gathering at all. I may indeed be twittering on to myself for most of the time. But so be it. I have a lot to learn too. And no matter what level of writing you are at it all comes back to the basics in the end.

We have something we want to say. And so for now, let us howl together, shriek into the night.