As a children's author, I have the privilege of reading to kids, mostly in schools and libraries, and I always start by telling them that my poems all come from my imagination. I continue by saying that they all have imaginations too, as good was mine or as anyone else's. That gets them thinking, and listening a bit more sharply.
During the reading of my poems, I ask for questions, a part I always enjoy because I never know what will come at me. What is most frequently asked is, where do I get my ideas? I remind them that I use my imagination but that
I am listening and looking and smelling the world around me for ideas or phrases or situations or animals or colors or jokes that can spark the beginning of a poem. By going towards life I am rewarded because life then comes back to me with buckets of stimulation.
I tell them that on my book jacket notes, it says: "'He spends a lot of time looking out the window,' reads one of Robert Forbes' report cards."
Daydreaming is healthy, and in our busy-every-minute high-tech lives, it's good to slow down and get out of the electronic bubble we have all put ourselves into.
We talk about word choice and how it is the vehicle of writing, while imagination is the perpetual fuel for it.
Poetry has many forms, and whatever they feel is right for them is what they need to use.
But poetry has rules that can be demanding too, and those rules make it more fun because of the challenges they present. I like rhyming, which can be hard. I also use meters, so there is rhythm to my poems. While metered rhymes can be difficult, I love the journey they take me on. I don't always know where I am going to end up and sometimes I know where I want the poem to go but I don't know how I will get there.
I wouldn't have it any other way!
In the end, I write poems to please myself, and I hope they please others. By reading to children, I hope to stimulate them to read poetry and to try to write some themselves.
I am scattering seeds in the belief some will sprout and scatter more seeds down the line.
Robert L. Forbes is President of lifestyle magazine ForbesLife and the author of the poetry collections Let's Have a Bite! and Beastly Feasts!
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“Vignette” is a word that originally meant “something that may be written on a vine-leaf.” This image makes me think: small, special, delicate, and perhaps not for everyone to see.
How apt is this image?
Nowadays, a vignette is what you call a snapshot in words. It differs from flash fiction or a short story in that its aim doesn’t lie within the traditional realms of structure or plot. Instead, the vignette focuses on one element, mood, character, setting, object, or if you’re clever, a unique and smooth blend of them all. It is the perfect form of writing for poetic descriptions, excellent for character or theme exploration and wordplay.
The language can be simple and minimalistic, or extravagantly crafted literary prose. It’s your choice. Write in the style and genre you are comfortable with and in the genre you love. There are no limits regarding style and genre. In fact, the vignette only has one rule: create an atmosphere, not a story.
If you’d like to read some wonderful vignettes, you can find an abundance of them at Vine Leaves Literary Journal, which is run by me and Dawn Ius. But to be honest, I’d give writing one a go before you allow yourself to become influenced by too much other work.
Set your mind on a moment. Use all the senses to describe it. Especially the neglected ones like touch and taste and sound. Try not to go over 800 words. Anything longer than that will want to become a story. 100-word vignettes are also acceptable. And if you can manage to do it in even less than that, we applaud you. But it has to be good—really good, to get away with something so short.
That being said, one of my favourite vignettes in Vine Leaves Literary Journal Issue #01, called “Flashback”, is two lines long. It was written by a poet named Patricia Ranzoni:
the softness from dialing the phone
is like lifting the lid to my music box
This was a very brave submission. But totally worthy. Can you see why? Read it out loud. Slowly.
Let me tell you why I love this piece:
I can absolutely feel myself in the moment. Silence surrounding me, either really early in the morning or late at night. Alone. That soft click and then purr when I lift the receiver of the hook, and then the dancing notes as I dial. I can see the flashback—a blurry image of a pastel pink ballerina spinning, the tune twinkling, and the box vibrating in my hands. I can hear a child laughing in my head. It’s me when I was a kid. The first time I ever saw a ballerina in a box. Magic.
A successful vignette must evoke emotion. If you can make us feel, you’re on the right track.
If Jessica Bell could choose only one creative mentor, she'd give the role to Euterpe, the Greek muse of music and lyrics. This is not only because she currently resides in Athens, Greece, but because of her life as a thirty-something Australian-native contemporary fiction author, poet and singer/songwriter/guitarist, whose literary inspiration often stems from songs she's written. Jessica is the Co-Publishing Editor of Vine Leaves Literary Journal and annually runs the Homeric Writers' Retreat and Workshop on the Greek island of Ithaca. For more information, please visit her website.
Congratulations to swag pack winners, LynNerd and bfav, and THE YEAR THE SWALLOWS CAME EARLY winner, Rebecca Kiel.
Over at the Class of 2k12, we're trying to come up with helpful, new ways to give back to readers, teachers, librarians, and booksellers. With that in mind, I've created a very amateur video I'm calling Poetry 101.
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Thanks for having me today, Caroline!
I'm intrigued. I might try writing some of these...
Thanks for sharing Jessica!
You're welcome! Thanks for sharing here. I love how doable you've made a vignette sound.
Jessica introduced me to the vignette. It's really changed my writing.