On breaking the rules (and words)

by | Sunday, July 11, 2010

My daughter on her blog has a new poem / haiku called Sweat, a haiku with one glich. She is in India right now where the temperatures are easily in the 90’s – which I guess explains the genesis of the poem. What was more interesting, to me however, was the manner in which she, quite instinctively, breaks up a word in the poem. Interestingly, she regards that as a “glich!” 🙂

Here is the poem.

Sweat
Sticky, icky, ew!
I wipe it off, and it trick-
les, right back again!
See the neat little trick of breaking up the word “trickles” so that it actually

“trick-”

“-les”

down the page. Reminds me of one of my favorite poets, e.e.cummings and how he plays with words. For instance here is a poem by him

l(a
le
af
fa
ll
s)
one
l
iness

It takes a bit of effort to read but it is worth it. With some thought you will see that in the parenthesis is the phrase “a leaf falls,” broken up so that it runs down the page, rather than across it. So instead of “a leaf falls” you read

(a
le
af
fa
ll
s)

Of course breaking it all up forces you (the reader) to read the lines in slow-motion, with pauses as it were. Also the shape of the letters comes through now as do the alliterative / symmetric “le” “ll” and “af” “fa” sounds. There is a visual and audio pattern here… a verbo-visual pun maybe. Sort of what Shreya did with the word “trickles.”

But there is more…

Outside the parenthesis is the word “loneliness” broken up so that you can see the words “one” sandwiched between two “L’s.” The “L” is written in lower-case, which again makes it look like the number “1” or capital “I.”

l
one
l
iness

So the repetition of the idea of “one” or “I” (once as “one” and twice as the number or the “I”) emphasizes the solitary nature of this experience. It could be 1 leaf falling, or one person watching one leaf fall… And all the pieces come together to set up a sad mood of one lonely person watching one leaf fall

How clever of mr. cummings. And how cool that Shreya, discovered something similar in breaking up “trickles” into two parts, showing how the sweat actually

“trick –

– les”

down.

To me it is an indication of her increasing comfort with language. It is only when we are comfortable with the rules that we start to break them, and it is there that true creativity and one’s one “writerly” voice emerges. So I would argue, despite Shreya’s thinking that it is a glitch, that it is not. It actually her noticing a pattern, imposed on her by the syllable count required by the Haiku structure itself, and then using that constraint for a creative purpose.

As for the mis-spelling of “glich” – I hope she doesn’t correct it. Because the poem now does have one glitch, the mis-spelling of the word “glitch.” How self-referential!!

All in all, what a wonderful way to begin a Sunday, reflecting on creativity and writing, inspired by a poem written by 11 year old Shreya. How very cool!!

A few randomly selected blog posts…

Plagiarism, update II

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Representing tensions through photography

Education is always about leadership and leadership has always been about tensions—navigating through them and seeking to find the right balance between them.  Leaders often feel a tug from individuals with conflicting interests or needs, with ideas that often tug in...

Of math and ambigrams: Exploring Symmetry

Ambigram for Symmetry displaying rotational symmetry I have been writing a series of articles for At Right Angles (a mathematics education magazine) with my friend Gaurav Bhatnagar on the art and mathematics of ambigrams. The first article in the series (Of Art and...

Unpacking McLuhan’s “The medium is the message” (1/3)

Unpacking McLuhan’s “The medium is the message” (1/3)

This is the first of a series of blog posts about how media influence our thinking. This, the first post, uses the invention of writing and print to unpack the meaning of McLuhan’s statement, “The medium is the message.” The second post, focuses on a story by Ted...

A Silver Lining side conversation with S. Giridhar:

A Silver Lining side conversation with S. Giridhar:

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Links of interest

During Dr. Jalaluddin's keynote I took some time to search online for some reports, prompted by what he had been saying. (Yes I was listening not just browsing). The first is an European study: ICT in Schools: Trends, Innovations and Issues in 2006-2007. You can...

Microblogging in the classroom

I have written quite a bit about how a technology can become an educational technology (see this, this, this and this). This is a non-trivial task that all educators face, and requires situational creativity in re-purposing / re-designing the existing tool to meet...

Guest blogging for Nashworld: TPACK video

Sean Nash over at Nashworld asked me to guest blog for this week while he is out with his students doing some really cool stuff. Here is a link to my posting: A TPACK video mashup!. I end the post with a couple of videos, one a commercial and the other my mashup...

2 Comments

  1. Punya Mishra

    Thanks Mike, I know your comment will make my daughter very happy! ~ punya

    Reply
  2. Mike Hasley

    Very clever. Maybe I’m not the poet I should be, but I’d rate your daughter’s poem as slightly better than Cummings (who I really like). The reason I say that is I understood what your daughter was doing right away, but I needed your explaination to understand the Cummings poem. Which is maybe the point behind a leaf falling?

    Reply

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