Monday, February 7. 8:00 PM EST. Virtual. February’s mini workshop will take place before the Lehigh Valley Poetry Virtual Salon open mic, first Monday of the month at 8:30 EST. We meet on zoom each month and poets are welcome to participate in the mini workshop, open mic, or both. The workshops are facilitated by E. Lynn Alexander, and are free, simple, quick, with no obligation. The purpose is to push each other to write, to experiment, to share, to think in new ways, and to use poetry muscles that we didn’t know we had. We don’t necessarily write a complete poem, but it might provide the shell of a draft or pieces that could later become a more polished poem.
For February, we will explore “The Power of Myth”. If you are familiar with Joseph Campbell, then you know where we are going with this. Joseph Campbell’s “The Hero With a Thousand Faces” inspired a tv series called “The Power of Myth” with Bill Moyers, and influenced George Lucas of “Star Wars” fame. Campbell wrote about the hero’s journey over adversity toward self knowledge and one’s true path. Mythology includes recognizable themes that can serve as warnings about challenges.
How can mythology connect us with our challenges, and how can we use themes to connect the struggles of the speaker/protagonist with readers? Can you think of an example of a poem that involves a character with traits that you recognize from a story, and a lesson that seems familiar?
This is too much for a thirty minute mini, for sure. But we can think about these ideas on our own and keep it simple for the exercise.
- Think about a myth, or legend. It could be a fable, or even a Disney movie. (Example: “The Lion King”)
- Think about a lesson or cautionary element. A choice, an obstacle. What did the hero overcome? (Simba questions duty vs. hanging out)
- How did this push a true path? (Simba learns that his family back home is suffering, presenting a moral dilemma about Hakuna Matata)
- Try your hand at writing some lines about a “hero”, similar to what you might find in myth- A lesson learned, a choice. If you get stuck, you can experiment with the scenario below.
Example: A bird (not really a hero, but whatever) who doesn’t want to fly south, even though he knows that cold weather is coming. He stalls, because the journey will be exhausting. He worries about falling into the Atlantic, not making it. But he goes, because uncertainty beats certain cold and dehydration, right?
The ocean = represents failure
