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.

Making the Familiar Strange

One of the best workshops I attended during the SIWC, was a two-day poetry session with Nikole Brown.  The two days were spent on the concept of Ostranenie, a Russian word meaning to make strange.* It is this idea that to write poetry, we need to defamiliarize things and see them as strange. We need to notice things in ways we never did before, experience them like they are new to us. In addition to sharing all of her words of wisdom, she took us through an exercise I found to be helpful in my own writing. I shared it with a member of my writing group over lunch that day and she thought it would be a great lesson with her middle school language arts students. I have tried to outline the activity for presentation in a lesson, while simultaneously producing my piece of writing. Brown had us use the image of a mermaid. I wasn't thrilled because I didn't have any connection to or interest in mermaids. Admittedly, it was the perfect type of image for the activity. The "steps" outlined below are the instructions given to us at each phase of the activity. Have at it!

Photo Credit- Hannah Mermaid by David Pu'u. Retrieved from http://flippinyourfins.tumblr.com/post/23400002571/hannah-mermaid-by-david-puu

Step 1:
Write a brief, one sentence description of a mermaid. It might be helpful to say "concrete description." She later added to describe it to someone who has never seen one before and has no idea what it is.

We wrote and she asked quite a few people to share examples. While we shared, she wrote words on the board. They were all words we heard repeatedly in people's writing. I wrote:

A mermaid has the head and torso of a human with the bottom and tail of a fish.

Step 2: 
She asked us to write a description again, only this time we were not permitted to use any of the words she put on the board.

sea
tail
fish
half-human

We wrote again and she asked people to share. As people read aloud again, she continued to take more words down and add them to the "do not use" list. I wrote:

An underwater creature who's bottom half is scales and skin, and whose top half looks perfect in a clam shell bikini.

Step 3:
She asked us to write a third time. The descriptions started to become a little more elaborate as writers tried to avoid the forbidden words. In addition to the other words, now she added more.

hair
creature
ocean
fins


We wrote again and she asked people to share. She took down more words again! I wrote:

A swimmer with no legs, only scales and flesh below the belly, and whose top half looks perfect in a clam shell bikini.

Step 4:
She asked us to write one more time. Now the do-not use list included all the others and

sand
legs
scales
swim

(There may have been others, but I lost track at this point while I tried to write.)

Now the writing was getting descriptive. We were starting to see how taking away the familiar words and cliche descriptions, were yielding some detailed and poetic imagery.

It's not particularly masterful, but here is what I finished with:

She flows through her world like a ribbon in the wind, her body one with the waves. She propels herself using only her dolphin kick. Arms by her sides, she needs them only as she rises to the surface. The other aquatic beings marvel at her grace, and she rises to the surface posing deceitfully for boaters who see her as a Barbie in a clam shell bikini.

Though I was fully engaged and bought in, I struggled with this activity. I wrote an encouraging note to myself in my notebook to keep trying and stretch myself as I worked through the exercise. It was all about defamiliarization and creating images not from your head but from your body. The discomfort I had was because I was learning something new. I loved every minute of it. There is another concept Brown spent some time on, but rather than drop it here and announce a future post, I'll save it for another day. It's coming. Stay tuned...

In the meantime, have fun trying this on your own as a writer or with students in a classroom. Take an iconic thing or image and gradually remove the go-to words everyone uses to describe it. It works!



*When speaking about defamiliarization and Ostranenie, Nicole Brown referred to Charles Baxter and his book, Burning Down the House: Essays on Fiction.