Mood also involves history, religion, thought, physiology, the planets, you name it. It isn’t less complex than tone or voice, but it can be less highly articulated… arising as it does from one sensibility, rather than from the communication between different characters. A scene may involve several characters and their moods, but the mood of the scene takes everything together as a whole. Mood is the feeling of shared ground… a sense of place (and the emotion inhabiting that place) in a poem.
Consider the two different (but linked) moods of the following poems by the same Japanese woman, writing between 974-1034:
What is the use In this world
of cherishing life in spring? love has no color—
Its flowers yet how deeply
only shackle us my body
to this world. is stained by yours.
-Izumi Shikibu
How does the following poem create mood? What is that mood?
Circle
Each scar on each tree
without light, without water.
The day is over.
Against the floor,
a chair scrapes hard.
Into bowls,
an avalanche of cereal.
Someone slams the door.
Abruptly into their cabinets,
dishes are stacked.
No one must speak.
Hearts circle like dogs,
afraid of air, of what it carries
from greater distances.
No one must open windows
diligently, methodically closed.
-Dzvinia Orlowsky
Mood Assigment
Two choices.
Either:
1.
Write an object poem—a poem, as Robert Bly says, where the poet’s attention “remains near the object all the way through the poem.” Do not bring yourself or any other character into the poem. Write only about meditation/observation/rendering space of the object.
Write an object poem—a poem, as Robert Bly says, where the poet’s attention “remains near the object all the way through the poem.” Do not bring yourself or any other character into the poem. Write only about meditation/observation/rendering space of the object.
Go here for thing poems by Francis Ponge (more than one page... hit arrow on left)
Or
2.
Write a poem that works almost entirely on the direct presentation of sensory experience.
Avoid abstract language and explanations to concentrate on details that are clearly seen,
smelled, touched, tasted, and felt. Use as many of your senses as possible. Think of your poem
as a painting for all the senses; to make this easier, I am asking you to stop time the way a camera
or a painting does. At least limit yourself to three to four seconds in time. No similes. No metaphors.
Clear, grammatical English only.
Write a poem that works almost entirely on the direct presentation of sensory experience.
Avoid abstract language and explanations to concentrate on details that are clearly seen,
smelled, touched, tasted, and felt. Use as many of your senses as possible. Think of your poem
as a painting for all the senses; to make this easier, I am asking you to stop time the way a camera
or a painting does. At least limit yourself to three to four seconds in time. No similes. No metaphors.
Clear, grammatical English only.
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