A Touch of the Poet

In Between the Commas, I argue that "-ingbombs" (aka verbal phrases) and "Wannabes" (absolute phrases) are the preferred phrase additions of poets and novelists, who use them as tools to add imagery and detail to their lines and sentences. To put this argument to the test, I just had my students--now unhappily mired in "distance learning"--write a variation on a poem assignment that I remember hearing about back in the early days of my career.

In this poem, you begin each line with the word "Once," which places the action of the line into the remote past, evoking a sense of poignant regret. A sentence as simple as "We danced," becomes freighted with possible meaning when you add "Once" to the beginning: "Once, we danced." Once you danced, but not any longer? What happened? the reader wants to know. Did you fall out of love? Did you lose your toes in a climbing accident on Mt. Everest? Do tell! But the idea is not to tell, but rather to let the reader feel that regret, however vague it might be.

Since things for my students have changed so radically over the past few weeks, I came up with a variation for this assignment. Here are the instructions:

Write a poem of three stanzas. Each stanza should consist of three lines (sentences). 
  • In the first stanza, begin each of the three sentences with the word "Once."
  • In the second stanza, begin each of the three sentences with the word "Today."
  • In the third stanza, begin each of the three sentences with the word "Someday."
The idea is to create a poem that is two-thirds "emo" and one third--the final third--hopeful, moving the reader from a rather doleful exploration of regret to an awareness of good things awaiting us in the future. These days, this is something we can all use.

Now, here's where the "-ingbombs" and "Wannabes" come in. I encourage the students to extend each of their sentences with either an "-ingbomb" or a "Wannabe," so that a sentence like this...
  •  "Once, we went shopping in the mall." 
now becomes something like this:
  • "Once, we went shopping in the mall, enjoying Starbucks Frappacinos and Cold Stone ice cream as we walked from store to store."
To borrow from George Costanza on Seinfeld, do you see what just happened here? By extending the sentence with an "-ingbomb," I added detail and imagery: you can now see that ubiquitous plastic Starbucks cup and recall the taste of mall ice cream on your tongue. The "-ingbomb," allows us transform an ordinary sentence into something enjoyable and memorable.

Completing an assignment like this--something they're more likely to take pride in--offers the students a far greater opportunity to demonstrate their mastery, or even their emerging proficiency, than yet another exercise, quiz, or test--assignments they tend to forget upon the moment of completion. 

Here's a great example from one of my students, Alondra, who writes a great "-ingbomb" in the second line of the first stanza, and a really beautiful "Wannabe" in the second line of her second stanza:

Once, we went on a road trip, where we admired the city lights of San Francisco.
Once, we woke early for school, hating the sound of the alarm clock buzzing in the morning.
Once, we were free outdoors.

Today, we have online classes, waiting for our teachers to give us our assignments.
Today, we cook for our family, the heat of the pozole filling up the whole house.
Today, we seem more occupied than we thought.

Someday, we will go back to San Francisco and walk upon the pier.
Someday, we will hear the alarm buzz off again, and learn new things at school.
Someday, we will meet the outdoors again.

I love the personification in that last line, which Alondra included without prompting or instruction, a fact that reminds us that we all carry within us a touch of the poet.

One last note: I encourage my students to aim for a kind of parallelism between the respective lines of the stanzas--that is, for each line to address the same subject as its teammates. You can see Alondra beginning to do that here in first and third stanzas--each of which addresses, line by line, San Francisco, school, and freedom, respectively. That middle stanza is not parallel at all, but I suspect this might be on purpose. Anyway, with that beautiful "Wannabe" about pozole, who's complaining? All I know is that once social distancing is a thing of the past, I know where I want to go to dinner!


  1. Author Annie Dillard ("The Writing Life," 1989) was asked by a student, "Do you think I could be a writer?" Dillard's response: "Do you like sentences?" According to Stanley Fish, author of "How to Write a Sentence," it's as important for writers to genuinely like sentences as it is for great painters to like paint.

  2. Loving the simplicity of application of this. Particularly for how well it works.


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