Algebratization

Back in November, I wrote about a poetry workshop I attended during the Sanibel Island Writers Conference. Nickole Brown gave us so many nuggets of wisdom and inspiration. We talked a lot about symbolism and imagery, and how they work as literary tools. You may recall I wrote about the word ostranenie, meaning to make strange. As writers, poets, Brown asked us to start looking at things as though we had never seen them before. It was a powerful way to conjure up images and words for things we had long been looking at with familiar eyes.

Another idea she shared with us, was the concept she called algebratization. It's funny, I looked it up when I got home, trying to find a more literary definition, but was unsuccessful. Look it up, and all you will find are mathematical explanations. However, the math definitions can easily be applied to the literary interpretation Brown gave us. She explained algebratization as when we turn something in our lives into an automatic symbol, a cliche. Thus, when we think of that word or phrases, we are  stuck with that automatic symbol instead of real, imagery taken in with our senses. It's a fascinating concept. Here is an example:

What do you think of when I say house? Or when I say tree or apple?

Many of us picture a symbol- the generic boxy house everyone draws when they draw a house. How about the tree? This time of year, you might picture a Christmas tree. Or because I live in Florida, I might picture a palm tree. A child might just draw that generic lollipop tree with a straight trunk and pom pom top. And the apple. More than likely you picture a Red Delicious apple or one quite similar.

The point is, we bank these icons as images for these everyday objects and fail to notice, and as writers describe, the very detailed intricacies of these things. Look out the window at a tree. Does it look like the icon image of a tree, or is it much more complex than that. When we did this with Nickole Brown, she pointed out the window of the Big Arts Building on Sanibel Island. We were looking at a beautiful expansive, not uniform series of branches from a non-icon image looking tree. She referred to the trees in North Carolina this time of year, and how different they would look in the middle of fall. I wrote down part of the description she gave, because it seemed to come so effortlessly. She said the leafless branches looked like nerve endings up in the sky. I knew just what she was saying, and I didn't picture the tree icon we have become so accustomed to.

There was no specific writing task we completed after this discussion, just a powerful reminder not to become lazy with the way we describe things as writers. We don't want our readers to picture just any tree or apple, we want them to picture the very specific one we seek to create for them in their minds. It was a great lesson, and a brilliant take away.