The Dog Days of Summer—
days when heat and humidity reign,
sizzling July days that melt into August.
Don’t waste them allowing your writing to languish. Instead, study the descriptive paragraphs, sentences and phrases found in summer poetry. Think about how words transform into specific moods and pictures. Then apply what you learn to your works in progress.
Here are a few examples.
A stanza from John Koethe’s poem, “Sally’s Hair”
It’s like living in a light bulb, with the leaves
Like filaments and the sky a shell of thin, transparent glass
Enclosing the late heaven of a summer day, a canopy
Of incandescent blue above the dappled sunlight golden on the grass.
(Copyright © 2006 John Koethe.)
Discover how Phillip Lopate uses a loaf of bread to describe layered city sounds in “The Last Slow Days of Summer” .
I’m lying on the grass, listening to city sounds.
They come to me in three-dimensional form,
Like a loaf of Wonder Bread. Baby carriages squeak
Near the middle. Cars humming through Central Park,
Somewhere near the back of the loaf.
What sound would be the end-piece, the round brown sliver?
The unzipping of airline bags.
Or a glove thwacked
By a rookie pitcher who falls apart
In the eighth inning.
(“The Last Slow Days of Summer” from At the End of the Day: Selected Poems and an Introductory Essay, copyright © 2009 by Phillip Lopate.)
In his “Summer Song” William Carlos Williams describes the moon fading on a summer morning and then adds himself to the scene.
Wanderer moon
smiling a
faintly ironical smile
at this
brilliant, dew-moistened
summer morning,—
a detached
sleepily indifferent
smile, a
wanderer’s smile,—
if I should
buy a shirt
your color and
put on a necktie
sky-blue
where would they carry me?
(This poem is in the public domain.)
And, finally, study poet Mark Strand’s character description in “My Mother on an Evening in Late Summer”:
When the moon appears
and a few wind-stricken barns stand out
in the low-domed hills
and shine with a light
that is veiled and dust-filled
and that floats upon the fields,
my mother, with her hair in a bun,
her face in shadow, and the smoke
from her cigarette coiling close
to the faint yellow sheen of her dress,
stands near the house
and watches the seepage of late light
down through the sedges,
the last gray islands of cloud
taken from view, and the wind
ruffling the moon’s ash-colored coat
on the black bay.
From Mark Strand: Selected Poems, by Mark Strand, published by Atheneum. Copyright © 1979 by Mark Strand.
Make time during these Dog Days to read and study more summer poems. You’ll find them online at:
The Poetry FoundationA reminder: In narrative writing use descriptive language sparingly and with good judgement. Keep it in your writer’s “toolbox” as a technique for advancing plot, character and theme.
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Autumn is the best time to sharpen your descriptive writing skills. Stop whatever you’re doing! Follow this advice from poet Elizabeth Barrett Browning. Grab a notebook and pen, get outside someplace quiet, and write.
Li Po, known as a poetic genius, lived in China during the Tang Dynasty. He wrote many of his poems while wandering the Yangtze River Valley. In this short poem, carefully-chosen words create a powerful image.
The 20th century Austrian poet, Rainer Maria Rilke, is well-known for his lyrical style. Notice his use of comparisons.
And, finally, study this poem by the contemporary British poet, Michael Shepherd. How do all five senses combine to create an image for readers?
darker under the trees
2. Humpty Dumpty, who explains the poem to Alice, also invented another word. The term ‘portmanteau word’ is now used by linguists to describe words such as ‘chortle’ and ‘slithy’ which combine, or blend, the sounds and meanings of two existing words. (Other famous examples include ‘brunch’, from ‘breakfast’ and ‘lunch’, and, more recently, ‘chillax’, from ‘chill’ and ‘relax’.) In Carroll’s novel Through the Looking-Glass (1871), Humpty Dumpty tells a bemused Alice: ‘You see it’s like a portmanteau – there are two meanings packed up into one word.’ A portmanteau is a sort of case or bag which opens out flat into two halves – so Humpty’s use of the term (we hope he won’t mind us assuming first-name terms with him, but if he does – well, he’s an egg, for goodness’ sake) is a sort of metaphorical representation of the two halves of a ‘portmanteau’ word, whose meanings and sounds are then packed up into one unit (e.g. brunch). ‘Portmanteau’, by the way, literally means ‘cloak-carrier’, since the bag was used to carry clothes around.
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