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boston poetry, Brian Miller, like a kid with blocks i leave secret messages, talk to me i am listening, winnah winnah, wordplay
Welcome to dVerse Poets & PubTalk…my name is Brian Miller and I will be your host, yet again. It’s a busy week when all my duties fall in a five day period. Ha. That’s okay, here in the States it is a holiday, so I am home playing today.
First things first, I told you at OLN when I announced the top three winners of our anniversary contest to be included in the Boston Poetry Mag anthology, that I would announce the remaining seven that will have their poems published at the Boston Poetry Mag website. As a reminder, the top three were: Jennifer (poet laundry), Kelly (mrs. mediocrity) and Kelli (ManaZen).
The seven poets winning a spot on the Boston Poetry Magazine website are:
Grace (Scarlet Verses), Arnab Majumbar, Kathy Bischoping, Kelvin S.M., Susan Daniel, Jason Weaver and Rachel (Rhyme me a smile)
Congrats poets! and thanks again to Mike at Boston Poetry Mag for this opportunity for all our poets.
~~~~~
Last week during MeetingTheBar, Gay and Margaret both asked me about the used of mixed lowercase and capitals within words, and I promised them an answer today. To me it is a form of word gymnastics that can be used several ways.
Take the title of this post for instance. I hid the word MASTER within the title. Sometimes when I write, I use the capitals to hide words or a poem within the poem that accentuates the bottom line or what I hope people get out of a poem. It may be a single word, a scattering of words or a phrase.
Another way I use CAPital letters within words is to give a word rhythm. Must like you use stresses in a line, capitalizing certain letters adds movement to the word or stresses a letter within a word. An example of that would dRop or pOW…adding the OW to pow. These are also places when I am performing where I may add a bit of crazy grit to my voice, deepen it really give emphasis to the word.
It is a bit of wordPlay I came up with a few years ago as I was discovering how words sound when they are put together or spoken.
How about you? How do you like to have fun with words? what is your favorite but of wordPlay?
dVerse 
Congratulations!
booyah! how are you heidi?
Wow, an awesome honor! Congrats to all…
As for having fun with words– I love alliteration and rhyme, love to use words with double meanings, love onomatopoeia– words that feel good on the tongue.
Thanks Brian, have a great day. ~Jason
congrats jason…yep, those are some of my fav tools as well….double meaning words esp….
woohoo..congrats to the winners… when we voted, there were no names on the sheets, so for me it’s a surprise as well…nice
ha. yep was pretty cool to see as i deciphered numbers to names…
….ah and you all know already that i love to play with CAPS – i don’t hide messages usually – for me the reason is mostly the rhythm and that i want to emphasize certain vowels/parts or emphasize an anaphora part as well… and sometimes even (how mean…smiles) to make the reader stumble in the flow a bit if i think it would be good to go slower over certain parts
ha. cool on the stumble to slow them down…putting that in my tool kit….smiles.
What I also like about your style is putting the words all together, no pause & of course the caps when i don’t expect it ~ I like the experimentation ~
Congratulations to the poems/poets winning the 2nd year anniversary contest. I look forward to reading your poems.
Thanks for sharing the mystery of your caps. I’ll read closer, and maybe try it.
Word play–I don’t do enough with it really. I enjoy reading it especially in poems at Whimsygizmo’s Blog and in Mama Zen’s poems.
i def enjoy reading it and finding different meanings within poems…maybe even different than what the poet intended…ha…
Congratulations to all the winners! I’m looking forward to reading all the winning poetry!
As for wordplay, I’m partial to puns. Here’s an old and very silly example:
Man Can’t Live By Bread Alone … Or Can He?
By Madeleine Begun Kane
Here’s some bread for some bread at the store.
Bring back change or you’re toast, cause we’re poor.
Get me wheat bread or white,
And I’ll toast it quite light.
But this dough ain’t for anything more.
Man Can’t Live By Bread Alone … Or Can He?
ha. def fun with puns kane…wonder why money is called dough or bread…there has to be a story there….
Thanks, Brian! I have no idea why money is called dough and bread, but I’m sure glad they are. 🙂 Nor do I know why toast means destroyed, although I’ve burnt my share of toast. 🙂
Congratulations to the poetry winners! Wanted to say that dVerse got me to unleash a bit of wordplay in my writing. It seems to happen while I’m writing especially with words like rollllling and my misspelled but now corrected SpIkY. They just lend themselves to play. Claudia and you have that down pat. Thank you for your prompts and this community. I’m lovin’ it. ha
ah any time grace….def fun to have you around and those willing to try new things…the rolllling visual is a very cool trick when you can pull it off….
congrats to da winnas!! woot… I always wondered why you did “word gymnastics,” just never asked… lol… and didn’t even notice the word MASTERS either… oh poo-y 😦
my fav would have to be metaphors… very common, but really clever ones are a treat… one of my favs ever would be from ‘Search Party’ by Frank Stanford, “Your passion is blue and white like the eyes of a child in the last hours, like a small white building with a woman lighting a cigarette…” Beautiful…
oh i def like to play with metaphors….smiles…great example there as well…will have to look up frank stanford as well….
Congratulations to all the winners! I’ll have to think a bit about what kind of word play I use.
cool…bring it back once you give it a thought…and happy labor day laurie…smiles.
So glad you explained this, Brian. I sometimes catch on to the rhythm, as I noted in a comment over the weekend to Claudia and rarely to the hidden words. I suspect now that I am on the lookout, I will find even more in your work and that of others who use this device. As for word play, I guess it’s something I do only rarely–most often using homonyms. Maybe I’ll try something for OLN! Happy Labor Day.
Oh, and I got so wrapped up, I forgot to congratulate the winners–all well-deserving poets.
smiles…homonyms are a good one that no one has mentioned yet…def, give it a shot for OLN…just finished writing mine…kinda continuation of the hip hop poem i posted yesterday….gotta get ready for round 2 of the rap battle in geo class you know…smiles….hope you have a great labor day as well….
…first, congratz to the winners! 🙂
…thanks for tackling this Brian…i gained much clearer understanding as i was one,too, who at times question the purpose of such wordplay… another thing is, i also would like to know the purpose behind putting “/” or “//” or “///” in a poem… you & Claudia most often than not used that… for me i treat those as indicating pauses… smiles…
…in my poetry i most of the time apply repetitions of word/s &/or line/s to create effect & for a basic reason that i just simply loving the sound it creates… i also have what i call ‘camouflage’ effect where i write a word using another set of words to create a camouflaging reading effect… to demonstrate, instead of writing the word “OCCUPIED”… i’ll turn it to something like this: “oak-you-pied”…
is-train-age »» “STRANGE”
arc-key-yolo-jizz »» “ARCHEOLOGIST”
is-low-lee-past-sing-buy »» “slowly passing by”
…& etc… but, i never showed a whole poem yet in my blog written after this effect although i have poems written in this way on my notes… smiles…
very cool kelvin – i love your camouflage effect – just lately saw a cool poem vid where they were doing something a bit similar
as to the // or /// – yes – it serves as a short stop/interruption – i use it when a line or stanza break would be too strong but i feel i need kindofaninterruption…smiles
here’s a link to the poem i mentioned above… way cool…
…is-train-age… butt-eye-pound-thee-bid-yow-real-lee-is-carey…. butt-eats-cool… hihi…. the vintage quality of the video & that ring of the phone gave me chills… interesting Claudia… thanks… smiles…
ha. this is fun to d/psi-for
WOw! Claudia, I love this!!
hey kelvin, congrats in making the list of them…you did see yourself on there right? it is a cool camo affect with the broken down words…i wann peak at your notes now…and claudia already caught the /// which can also kinda slip in when you need an and and dont have one to use, or for a quick turn of phrase is another reason to use….
…yes i did see my name up there… thanks Brian… smiles… i’ll see what i can do to post some of my camouflage poems… 🙂
ah, that is very cool and def original wordplay…
…yes… it’s like providing spelling & pronunciation at the same time… 🙂
First congrats to all the winners 🙂 competitions are fun.
As for me, I have a iambic clock ticking in my head … tic-toc— and sometimes I need to shut it off…. advices are appreciated 🙂
But I do like when you can create a rhythm and with repetitions… I find it intriguing that the same sentence can change meaning depending on the context it is written – even with the same poem.
so true in how a smae or similar sentence can change meaning…ha….sometimes i wish i could use your clock…i have only the rhythm the words find for themselves….
I sure wish I could find another rhythm sometimes… 🙂 … but that I can only do in haiku.
THANK YOU BRIAN – I am so glad I FINALLY asked you why??? Because I’ve wanted to know for a long time; yet I thought I already should have known and I was a little embarrassed to be so ignorant. So the other day I thought it really isn’t important if I’m ignorant – Inquiring minds still DO want to know. Now I think I need to re-read your work so I can find the “poems with the poems ” like the “play within the play” (oh how Shakespearean of you, my bard). I was guessing it was kind of like a word image thing – maybe street art like – wouldn’t have jumped to performance art. So really glad you told us.
I like what Claudia said in her comment too. It is interesting about “slowing” down the pace”. I was taught that one should do that with meter.
As for me I DEFINITELY do NOT have a clock in my head. I have to work diligently at getting my meter right. My natural way of writing is straight out of my head – stream of consciousness– as some of you who have read my stuff for a while probably know. I guess the other thing that seems “natural” for me is to use a lot of dashes as caesuras (that’s my home-made trick for slowing things down). But I like that we are sharing our personal thoughts about getting this stuff down – I admire the word play of poets – poets like e.e. cummings, Ogden Nash, and Wallace Stevens took really exceptional risks in their poetry by use of different and self styled devices.
ah dashes are cool…i tend to use those as well…and hey poetry is risk itself…smiles…i would guess my natural way of writing is straight out my head as well…though sometimes after i reorder the way things come out…
PS – Forgot to congratulate the contest winners! You go, poets!!
HellO. Congratulatons! you guys on being published in Boston Poetry Magazine! I love what you did Brian for the word Master. I’m going to have to see about using letters in a different way for word play!
ha. you said HELLo lol….give it a try…its fun…poetry should be fun you know…smiles.
Congrats to all the winners 🙂 And thanks for including my name in the list , smiles ~
I am intrigued by the word play/gymnastics and have tried to play with it in my EA blog ~ Though I am taking your advice and listening to some YT performance poems to see how it sounds and what words to use ~
Wishing you all Happy Monday ~
ah but you earned that spot on the list grace…it was a blind vote and none of us knew who wrote what…smiles….
Congrats to all the winners! I’m honored to be named among such a talented group of poets! I have caught on to some of the hidden words in your pieces Brian…I find that fun, like a puzzle of sorts. And the use of the caps for stress effect I think works too. I like that Gay and Margaret asked the question…because sometimes I think I got it and other times I wasn’t sure if I understood it as intended. And I like Kelvin’s question about the /// too…maybe I’ll try giving these techniques a shot! I really like wordplay with the duality (or multiplicity) of the meaning of a word, or words, or theme in a poem too…fun when you can effectively take a piece in different ways.
definitely great when a poem is spun such as each person reading it may see something a little different….some the surface and some the deeper meanings…
Hey,
That is an interesting way of making the poem even a more enjoyable read. I tend to give a more stress while reading the cap. letters. I never figured out the hidden words but now, I will be on watch.
For wordplay, I generally use some words which are unsuitable at certain places because I devise a new meaning for those words there, which is quite synonymous to the original meaning but not very much so. It may get confusing for the readers to read but if they read the verse again, they can understand it because it is right in the face but not specifically told. I love onomatopoeia and alliteration. Otherwise, I keep it plain and simple.
Have a good time!
-HA
corso used to use some really surprising word choice…he is a fav so i always appreciate that….penguin dust from his poem marriage is one that always springs to mind….onomatopoeia is def fun too….sounds intrigue me…smiles.
Wordplay or even Textromancy…This is one of my most favorite things to do…at the height of my inability to use my eyes and ears…I used to play with words in my mind to make the time go by…I remember my first fascination was the word live and evil and devil and lived and stressed and desserts and I wondered how can this be did someone plan this…who has the instruction manual of the English Language…Now I understand we all do..My last wondrous word of amazement is that of Twilight…a one in all word if you will…the light mixed perfectly with darkness for an eternity in one word better yet could like TwIIlight for True Will love light or just Truwillight and in ultimate reality anyway in true literal meaning that point where light is neither darkness or light…the meaning of life in one word…In fact this week’s word for my blog post is KroarK a special roar with a special energy…the next week ‘Will” be Twilight and am not sure in how many directions that may be….one of my favorite things to do is make up words and use google and find a little amusement that I may be the first one on the planet to use…one was neuroextraterrestrialdiversity…promoting acceptance of alien ways of thinking if you will…eviLive..is another interesting one where opposites attract hehe…anyway I better go now as you might imagine and you already likely noKnow I could go on and on an on until on becomes oneanthesame…seeyalaterfriend….hope to start spending more time doing diverse trends…nice to find other people living on ‘that’ planet2tootwo…
oj i can blame eminem for the love and evol…haha…that was the first place i heard it….oo truewillight is a cool word….ha…def fun read through your comment and your play with words….loveIT
Congratulations to the winning poets! Well deserved, all!
most def mary….smiles.
Firstly ConGRATulations to all the inspiring poets that are mentioned.
Hopefully one day I shall be able to write as you, so thank you all for your continued inspiration.
I HAve REcently stARted to use CAPitals also – not only does it give the piece rhythm but impact (or stresses) as you mention. I would like to set different formats apart from justified and centered but it never allows me to do this…. any hints anyone?
Thanks for tending the bar Brian and your sharing.
i dont have that problem on blogger though i have heard that wordpress does….wonder if you could figure out the html coding and see if that would work on WP….hmm…let me see what i can do…
A lot of html tags just won’t work in standard wordpress. I’m a web developer by day so I’ve tried so many things but it just comes down to it being glitchy. If you pay for your domain through wordpress.org, that’s another story. You can do what you want that way.
the html with the what 😦 I’m warning you ..I’m hopeless when it comes to anything technical 🙂 be WARned – thank you Brian appreciate any HElp
wordpress is a bit of a diva with formatting – i usually put in lines as space holders and color them white, so you won’t see them any more once posted. mike jewett of boston poetry gave me some good html hints as well – if you’re interested i can email them to you
haha, my ears were burning. Hope they helped you at least a bit claudia. Do you have the fully-free WordPress, or have you paid for any upgrades? I think there are extra tools you can use if you’ve paid.
Yes please and thank you so much – yes diva she is and a frustrating one at that! Thank you Claudia – appreciated.
Always wondered how you chose which letters to capitalize, Brian! I love your wordplay. You use it so effectively. Congrats to all the winners!!!
why thank you mouse…smiles.
A hearty congratulations to all of the winners! It sincerely was tough; there were so many great poems submitted. A big thanks to everyone who took part and keep your eye out at BPM when I post the winning poems this week.
looking forward to it mike…
Congratulations to all the winners. Look forward to reading all the winning poems!
Yes, I did notice the capitalisation within words for both Brian and Claudia and was intrigued. I do like wordplay and puns, but perhaps not so obviously in poetry.
hiya marina….def another tool to stick int he tool box for when you need it or want it…you never know…smiles.
My congrats too to the winners. And thanks to those who asked about Brian and Claudia’s caps, because I was completely puzzled. Great to get the explanations.
The main thing I do in word play is something that perhaps doesn’t always get picked up on. If there is ambiguity (which often there is not — but if there is) I intend ALL the possible meanings.
I used to like acrostics too, not necessarily at the beginnings of lines, but haven’t done that for a long time.
when words have multiple meanings it is very cool what they can do to a line, that is for sure…
Congratulations to everyone!!!
Thanks, Brian, for explaining your use of capital letters; should have known they were far from random. I love wordplay, double meanings, alliteration (perhaps too much) & sometimes try to write using one sound…but there is so much more to learn.
sound is a huge part of writing for me…i have said it before but that was one of the biggest transitions for me in writing learning how words sound and play together….
Many, many congrats to those wonderful poets!
Congratulations to all the winners and a special thank you to Brian and Claudia who have given us a place to gather.
Congo! to the winners. Waiting to read those fine pieces!
oo nice…getting a conga line going…smiles…ok, maybe not what you intended…ha
Wow! Thanks for letting me know I missed the announcement, Brian. 🙂 I am honored to get published by Boston Poetry Mag. 🙂
How fun to hear a bit of background on your capitalization technique. I really like it. It helps me to read it the way you want it to sound and then I get a poetry slam in my head. 🙂