Objects of Discovery

Using Poems to find Fiction

Objects: An Opening

Consider opening with the object provided immediately, given a bright light or a shadow, a full-on view, or something glimpsed from a slant. Even if tilting or framing the camera, you decide the effect the object will have on the character, the persona, and the reader. Remember that naming gives weight, has power as well as obscuring or mystifying or dwelling in mystery. Two sides of a coin: reality and metaphor, literal and figurative. Blend as needed! We start with a poem from LI-YOUNG LEE “From Blossoms”

From blossoms comes

this brown paper bag of peaches

we bought from the boy

at the bend in the road where we turned toward

signs painted Peaches.

I love the way we start with an item or nature, the blossom, something we don’t think about when we hold the peach in our hands. Where do the items you’re writing about come from? How is it made? Is it natural or man-made? Does it cause destruction in order to get into your hands or your body? What is lost or gained from the making of this object? Is the power/feeling you gain from it worth what is lost or destroyed in order to possess it? I love how Lee grounds us in the sensory feelings of the object before spinning it toward metaphor, toward deeper meaning, or resonance. This is just a peach, and it’s also more than a peach. It shimmers in meaning, one that’s a shade different for each reader.

O, to take what we love inside,

to carry within us an orchard, to eat

not only the skin, but the shade,

not only the sugar, but the days, to hold

the fruit in our hands, adore it, then bite into

the round jubilance of peach.

Prompt: Pick an object, start with the process of how that object was obtained. Focus on the specific, concrete details of the object, name it or rename it by using all five senses if possible, make it come alive on the page, and then move us toward a metaphor., a way to show us the power or destruction it could cause the narrator, main character, persona, or yourself. Can you imply this without saying it directly? Or give us an object of subjective power and show us how weak it is, how harmless is it if put into a different situation than it’s usually in. Something broken, something that held you mentally or physically in place, but no longer scares you now? Consider how you can write about this object, the experience of it, and continually decrease the distance between the piece and the reader, make it intimate!