Great literature is simply language charged with meaning to the utmost possible degree.
Ezra Pound

Monday, October 13, 2014

Voice lesson #1 on imagery

Consider:
She looked into the distance, and the old terror flamed up for an instant, then sank again.  Edna heard her father’s voice and her sister Margaret’s.  She heard the barking of an old dog that was chained to the sycamore tree.  The spurs of the cavalry officer clanged as he walked across the porch.  There was the hum of bees, and the musky odor of pinks filled the air.
-Kate Chopin,
The Awakening


Write a paragraph in which you create a scene through auditory imagery.  The purpose of your paragraph is to create a calm, peaceful mood.  Use one olfactory image to enhance the mood created by auditory imagery.

Wednesday, October 1, 2014

Voice lesson #1 on detail

Until I returned to Cuba, I never realized how many blues exist.  The aquamarines near the shoreline, the azures of deeper waters, the eggshell blues beneath my grandmother’s eyes, the fragile indigos tracking her hands.  There’s a blue, too, in the curves of the palms, and the edges of the words we speak, a blue tinge to the sand and the seashells and the plump gull on the beach.  The mole by Abuela’s mouth is also blue, a vanishing blue.
-Cristina Garcia, Dreaming in Cuban


Choose a color and describe a scene using at least three varieties of that color.  Try to mix details of landscape and people.