Your Moves
1. Practice using specific detail: choose one item from a group of similar
objects, and then describe it in your notebook so that your chosen object
could be recognized from among the group. I do this in class sometimes
by bringing a box of rocks or leaves. Is your rock three inches in circumfer-
ence or two, smooth or lumpy, flecked with colors you can name, scented,
dusty, or ringed?
2. Move from literal description into figurative: that rock you're still hold-
ing, is it like a pumice for softening feet? Is it ringed with white lines like
a planet, or smooth and speckled as a robin's egg? Could it be a lost filling
from a giant's tooth-or perhaps the period that ends the sentence of a love
note spelled out in boulders on a sandy beach?
3. Write in your notebook about a memory you have gratitude for. Focus
on what you could see, smell, taste, hear, and touch in this scene. Even
a little scene will do, like listening from your bed while your older sister
made coffee... describe how the sounds, then scent, reached you. Read
"My Father's Song" by Simon Ortiz and notice how important the sensa-
tion of touch is to his gratitude poem.
4. Write to uncover a difficult or traumatic memory, looking to Patrick Lane's
poem, "The Far Field" for example. Focus on imagery and the meaning
that surfaces, not on judgment or "poor me."
5. Writers tend to overuse sight imagery and underuse all other forms of
imagery. Read Stephen Kuusisto's "Horse" and notice how rich this imagery