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When Has a Reaction Occurred?

Most people have innate resistance to poetry, and more broadly, reading

It is work to read it
It does not resemble things they encounter in their day-to-day lives
It requires thought and digestion — there is an affection for simplicity

Veteran readers do, too

Poetry fans may be halfway through a collection and getting tired, or,
They may stumble across the work in a literary magazine, crammed in with other stuff
The work or style or genre may be outside their comfort zone

So how can we conceptualize that a poem has landed?

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∆G: Gibbs Free Energy

Delta G (∆G) is the energy required to make a reaction occur

In most reactions, two things are true:

1) Energy must be put into the system to make the reaction happen

2) The resulting product is more stable than the original materials

In this metaphor, what’s what?

Your text makes the reaction occur
The reaction is the reader’s emotional state
The energy given off is what they take with them (ie. the reader’s new stability)

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∆G of a Stable Reaction

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Raw Writing Material (RWM)

RWM is a concept of craft technique density. In other words, how much are techniques like imagery, repetition, metaphor, lineation, etc. employed

And how much do readers need to slow down and consider what they’ve read?

RWM is the driving force behind ∆G

A dense piece of writing that tries too hard has a high concentration of RWM, and the energy requires prevents readers from experiencing the kind of satisfaction that “hits just right” (dense, convoluted writing)

A poor piece of writing lacks the RWM required to overcome the require ∆G to instill a reaction in readers (flat, boring writing)

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In cooking, energy is continually added. The ∆G is always positive.
Eating and enjoying the food makes the action worth the cook, and would lower the line toward zero

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What if you required a ∆G of 40 to have a reaction as a reader?

Answer: you don’t have one.

How many things have you read in life that you can’t remember?

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It is also possible to add too much…

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Dense Writing w/ No Payoff

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What are things that inhibit ∆G?

Low-quality text
Cliché
Unrelatable circumstances
Showing, not telling (mileage may vary)
Common tropes or circumstances
Inconsistent tone
A bad outlook or internally inconsistent perception going into a read
Anything that “takes you out” of an experience
Reading on a warm August afternoon at the family picnic as all the kids are getting back from the pool and the noise they make distracts you until suddenly air raid sirens begin blaring and you get a text message from the government that the zombie apocalypse has started and you need to find shelter before the quarantines begin…

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Exercise #2 (brief!)

Look at your piece of writing from earlier

What is the ∆G curve of your poem?

How hard does it “try”
Does your manufactured twist make your ∆G negative?
Does the ∆G curve go back up after the twist is over?

Secondary, related thought, if the curve goes up, should the writing end there?

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Ask yourself: What are high ∆G moments for you?

Great wording / employ of a literary device

Full-circle moments

Excellent punchlines

Amazing plot twists

Wire-to-wire

Ask yourself: at what point do you settle into the writing?

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A neutral experience means you got out what you put in
This makes G a parabola that returns to 0
Not memorable, but not a piece of writing to necessarily avoid

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What about writing that cuts deep multiple times?

- Most stories are not satisfying until the conclusion, which means ∆G typically

cannot be negative in fiction until the end.

- Some poems should end earlier.

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Why is this useful?

Because all writers MUST be able to look at their own writing and assess:

When is effort being put in?
When is page space being wasted?
When does the effort not achieve a worthwhile payoff? (positive ∆G)
At what points are readers feeling a payoff?

Think about how writers usually structure their payoff — there’s usually a moment you can identify the beginning of the ∆G nosedive.

Often structured to appear at the end of page breaks, chapters, stanzas, or anywhere else that copy abruptly ends

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What story/poem would make this shape?
What about the structure of a TV episode, or series?
You would have to be ambivalent about the piece by the end

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Rebirth

The summer grasses.

All that remains

of warriors’ dreams.

Like an army of arms stabbing the sky with hundreds of tiny daggers,

like stalagmites covering a cave floor like brittle, dusty, unwashed teeth,

hungry, empty tree branches attempt to stitch the sky as they

await their leaves. Their gnarled, aging wisdom spreads upward,

bark-covered cobwebs a net, the stars caught in its threads

gleaming salamanders slipping through the ground’s

decomposing goo. Each egg a bud, each hatch a blossom.

Each fallen branch sinking into sludge and preparing

to help relaunch the spring phoenix and its brilliant light.

I write, erase, rewrite

erase again, and then

a poppy blooms.

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Do you feel different after reading this poem?
If so, then your ∆G is negative puts you at rest at a more stable state
The transition state is the moment of shock, change, or internal reaction

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∆G of a Stable Reaction

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Elements of a Reaction

Craft techniques are your elements, the fundamental building blocks

Helpful to split those into two categories:

1) Figurative Techniques: image, metaphor/simile, point of view/voice, symbolism

2) Structural Techniques: lineation, enjambment, meter, rhyme, alliteration, white space, line breaks, form

A reaction is balanced when a few things are true:

The writing is structured to elicit a positive reaction from readers (ie. negative ∆G)
No individual element of the writing is has more weight than the rest
The elements work together to make a cohesive piece of writing

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What can be said about this guy’s performance? �(in relation to the rest of the film)

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Focal Point

Among the dusty hall and overhead fluorescents

its hotel lobby art and dullard floral print bedspread

and the red chair, center of the room, owning

each shadow, red turning darker red, until red

is what the poet sees outside the window.

It could be blood, it could be lights, red.

It’s a lazy boy looking, peripherals planted

on the thing holding up traffic: a man

also in a chair at the center of the intersection

who sees himself everywhere

who sees himself sitting

who won’t see death coming from his sightline.

Is this the poem “Focal Point” about a man being reflective about the comings and goings of people?

Is it about a man seeing himself in others?

Is this about a man trapped

in crummy lighting?

How much weight does

the chair have?

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Gravity: Craft Techniques Can Develop Their Own

Highly dense and/or high-mass objects push against the fabric of space time create a pull by making a depression

It’s similar to how a bowling ball attracts objects when creating a depression in a mattress, and causes other objects to roll towards it.

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What does this tell us?

Some things have more “mass” than others

Adding too much mass in one direction will skew things in that direction

This is a personal opinion, but: not enough writers pay attention to the “mass” of their craft techniques

Repetition can overwhelm, metaphor can overwhelm, symbolism can overwhelm, convolute, and obliterate the original message, especially if writer intent is unclear

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Crystals are rigid, well-defined repeating structures made up of atoms or molecules

Individual components are known as Unit Cells
The entire structure is a crystal lattice

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Poetic forms are a type of crystal lattice

In a poem made entirely of couplets, each couplet is a unit cell
In a sestina, each six-line stanza is a unit cell

In both cases, the words are atoms

These can get very long

Alfred, Lord Tennyson’s “In Memoriam A.H.H.” is 2892 lines broken into 4-line stanzas
That is 723 stanzas
He must have spent hundreds of those stanzas trying to write toward the structure

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You can define the unit cell as anything

When in doubt, create form to serve your own purpose
Forms create reader expectation, typically positive
Let’s define a unit cell as a single line made up of 1 image created from 2 objects
And use that to write a listicle poem about what I found while rummaging in my garage
So, let’s call the poem something unique like…

Stuff I Found Rummaging in My Garage

13 old glue traps stuck fast with wood chips

a mouse skeleton lording over a kingdom of empty wrappers

rusted bike in three parts, toolbox below implying unfinished business

grease puddle underneath overflowing, dripping grill tray

crying daughter holding her father’s head

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Selection from

“I Remember”

by Joe Brainard

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Exercise #3 – Break and Rebuild Your Writing

Take your writing and figure out how to break it into the largest number of component parts, in a way that still makes sense

What fundamental attributes does the unit cell have?
Where does the payoff begin?
How can you maintain unit cell structure but still enjoy a negative ∆G?

GOALS FOR THIS WRITING PIECE:

Identify the base unit cell
Write 3 new unit cells
Nominate the unit cell that begins the ∆G decrease

How do you keep decreasing ∆G from there?

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Let’s Revisit a Poetic Device: the Volta

Voltas offer a change or pivot, as shown by Simon Armitage’s “Remains”:

I see every round as it rips through his life –

I see broad daylight on the other side.

So we’ve hit this looter a dozen times

and he’s there on the ground, sort of inside out,

pain itself, the image of agony.

One of my mates goes by

and tosses his guts back into his body.

Then he’s carted off in the back of a lorry.

End of story, except not really.

His blood-shadow stays on the street, and out on patrol

I walk right over it week after week.

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Balancing and Re-Ordering Equations

Let’s start with balancing chemical equations:

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How can we use this to achieve balance?

Remember the important aspects of balance:

The reaction must overcome a reader’s ground state and make them feel
The reaction must not have elements with too much mass
Limiting element influence can be done via equilibrium exercises

This can be legit useful when writing comes out “samey”

Decide what you want the poem to be

Build the unit cells

Use the unit cells to distribute the mass so the gravity of one piece doesn’t overwhelm its neighbors

Use a volta to help balance the equation – it must be in the middle

Normally the volta would be an arrow sign, instead

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Example Formula

I want to write about loss

The loss will be revealed as my volta

And should also be where ∆G goes negative

I will use 2 metaphors, 3 images, 1 simile, and repetition 3 times

Both metaphors must share 1 of those images and the simile

I will write a poem and then “balance” that poem

Then the poem will be rewritten

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Example Formula, Cont’d

My Grandfather’s Hands

My grandfather’s hands are rough leather, like armor for the family

My grandfather’s hands are tough and thick, deadened fingers knotted by the woods and bears and the tools in his shed

My grandfather’s hands are the foundation this house was built upon, tough as concrete, better for the family to stand upon than this marshy unstable ground

My grandfather’s hands help blow the trumpet that wakes us for breakfast and summons us from play at the end of the day

There we stand, shaky at first, the soldier’s awaiting their general’s call

Hoping, waiting, that they’ll grab us before we tumble down

But we wait forever, because grandpa is dead

And like his hands, we knew our foundation would crack eventually

Waiting, the vulture flies overhead

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The poetic elements, broken down

M(1) = His hands are rough leather

M(2) = His hands are the foundation

S(1) = His hands are tough as concrete

S(2) = His hands are like armor

S(3) = Cracking foundation

I(1) = Knotted fingers

I(2) = The hands blow the trumpet

I(3) = Marshy, unstable ground

I(4) = Vulture flies overhead

R(1-4) = My grandfather’s hands

So if the volta is an equals sign, what does this look like?

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Here is what the equation looks like:

M1 + M2 + S1 + S2 + I1 + I2 + I3 + R1 + R2 + R3 + R4 = S3 + I4

And here is the balanced equation:

M1(I1, S1) + S2 + R1 + R2 + I2 = M2(I1, S1) + S3 + R3 + R4 + I4

M(1) = His hands are rough leather

M(2) = His hands are the foundation

S(1) = His hands are tough as concrete

S(2) = His hands are like armor

S(3) = Cracking foundation

I(1) = Knotted fingers

I(2) = The hands blow the trumpet

I(3) = Marshy, unstable ground

I(4) = Vulture flies overhead

R(1-4) = My grandfather’s hands

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My grandfather’s hands are rough leather,

tough as concrete and sprouting knotted fingers.

For us, his hands are like armor,

protective guardians, both.

My grandfather’s hands are gentle and loving,

they blow the trumpet when we visit, signaling food is ready

in the lifting fog of early morning

and in the dimming, eye-squinting sun.

Neither trumpet nor hands are here—

we buried him with his trumpet, hands intact.

My grandfather’s hands were the foundation,

tough as concrete with dependable, knotted fingers.

The vulture circles over the deepening cracks

running through the foundation’s concrete.

My grandfather’s hands will make us wait forever,

drowning out the pathetic bugle

we though could replace his trumpet

with our inadequate hands.