Scary Clown - Don't Look!

[Fire Monkey]

You looked. ;D Ok, then I guess I might as well give you the challenge.

As you can see, I have posted a picture I painted of a clown What I am challenging you to do is to write a poem that expresses the feelings this clown creates. So NOT a story, and not a description of the picture - just try to capture the emotional reaction. Best is if you never mention the scene in the picture at all, just find the words to make us know the emotions it creates.

Stories and descriptions are both important to poetry but I believe the key to effective story telling is the ability to communicate the feelings - when you write a poem, if you just tell [or even show] what is happening you may get a good poem but if you can make the reader feel the emotions of what happens, then you can produce a great poem so that's what this challenge is about. Make us feel what you feel.

[Fire Monkey]

They keep looking but they don't write nothing
Someone from off the internet
Poets and curious onlookers
I'm waiting but I don't see anything yet

Sorry, just thought maybe a little nudge might stir someone ;D

[Brigid Briton]

Hi Tim,

OK, I'll take a shot. This is how this image made me feel---like a scared little girl whose mother tries to convince her, against all the little girl's instincts, that clowns are OK. I don't know if this was what you were looking for or not, but it's what came to mind...

Mommy, you said it was alright,
I shouldn't be afraid of clowns,
they are just people
who want to make other people laugh.

You said his job is at the circus
and that he isn't waiting
in the closet
or under the bed
to get me when you
turn the light off.

You said he doesn't
look in the window
when I'm sleeping,
he's just a man
dressed up funny,
not the boogie man.

You promised me, Mommy,
that you'd never let him
hurt me...

Mommy?

[Fire Monkey]

Glad to see some poetry being posted - it's a good start, though if I might, the poem is good, but I believe it could be better - you often say to show rather than tell - the same thing goes for feelings but it can be trickier - the choice of words can often change the feeling even though they migt mean the same thing or details you choose to make use of. In this poem you are telling us your thoughts and they do carry emotions with them but I think you can capture the feelings rather than tell them - perhaps if I gave an example of what I mean - I'll grab a verse from a song [not something that fits this picture but off the top of my head it does a good job I think of showing what I mean]

The night sets softly
With the hush of falling leaves,
Casting shivering shadows
On the houses through the trees,
And the light from a street lamp
Paints a pattern on my wall,
Like the pieces of a puzzle
Or a child's uneven scrawl

This tells us little and yet it gives us a feeling and mood, but what if I wrote the same 'fact':

At night the street lamp casts shadows on my wall.

It says the same thing basically but does it make you feel anything - what I left out does not add anything much to the picture the verse paints but it contains almost all of the feeling the verse is supposed to give.

Does that make sense? I wanted to take something from your poem and show how it could have more emotion shown rather than told but I couldn't do it on the spot - this is a very difficult thing to do after all.

[Callisse J. DeTerre]

I had a hard time connecting with this. Clowns don't creep me out at all, usually. I wanted to go to clown college. However, I admit your picture does a bit but it feels like a joke. I don't usually write as if I'm speaking but this is what spilled forth, first draft. I'm not sure if there's adequate rhythm to call it a poem.

Suspect
AAHH!!
Quit it. Now. Haha.
Put...your...arms...down.
I mean it and turn
on the lights in this place!
Geez,
Funny! Come on, please.
You're creepin me out,
hiding under that painted face.
Wait,
I mean don't,
I mean stop. I won't...
Is this a joke now?
I'M ASKING JUST IN CASE
I'm running for no reason.

~Callisse J. DeTerre, copyright 2011

[Fire Monkey]

Ok, first, I realized that in my last post I forgot to say what I was quoting so I wanted to clear that up - it was the first verse of Patterns by Paul Simon.

Moving on - Callisse, I wasn't trying to tell people what they should feel about the picture so if it doesn't scare you, that's fine - Clowns are a tricky subject, Coulrophobia is one of the top ten specific phobias so there are a lot of people who are afraid of clowns - on the other hand, there are a lot of people who have nothing but good feelings about clowns - so whatever the picture evokes in you is fine, the point of the challenge was to express the emotional reaction to the picture - whatever that might be. ;D

I admit I find clowns disturbing - oddly, smiling clowns much more so than crying clowns ... I think Red Skelton's Freddie the Freeloader is one of the few clowns that I never found creepy or scary at all. But please feel free to express whatever emotion the picture holds for you.

Now, as for the poem. I see what you mean about the rhythm - it feels a bit choppy - almost as if there is a rhythm that it is trying to be, but not all of the lines seems to be catching it - sort of "almost fitting" a rhythm but not quite. That can actually work sometimes but I think it might need a bit of adjusting - I think some of the periods are actually, in this case, causing it to be hard to read; perhaps changing:

"Quit it. Now. Haha." to
"Quit it, now! Haha." might read better - you might try reading it out loud and watching for spots where the flow seems to stumble and then decide if the stumble works in favor of the feeling you are trying to express or against it, and if against, then see what can be done to improve the flow at that point. Often an extra syllable or sometimes one less is all it takes.

The last two lines - when I first read them I thought there was a strong break between the two - mostly caused by the all caps in one and then the lower case in the other - but after reading it 3 times I realized you probably meant them to go together more. What I mean is, the first time I read it as:

"I'M ASKING JUST IN CASE" {full stop - end of thought}

"I'm running for no reason." {new thought}

Whereas I now think you mean that you are asking in case you are running for no reason. - one complete thought. If I am right then you might want to do something to make that clear.

You have conveyed the emotions but mostly by implication - that is, indirectly. That's ok, but I think you would get a more powerful expression if instead of doing it as a monologue you were to have at least some of the poem outside of the monologue. Like this:

'AAHH!!'
the clammy fog swallowed the sound
'Quit it, now! Haha.'
my heart skipped as my breath was found
Put...your...arms...down.
and my feet seemed frozen to the ground

Obviously that was just written on the fly but the point is, adding a few lines that expand on the atmosphere to help get the feeling across. I'm not suggesting a line between every line, though that might well work, but simply something to add to the senses rather than just what you are saying. Also, of course, it has to be expressing the emotions you want - what I just wrote was based on the thought of one startled by a joke - or at least that seemed to be the tone at the start of your poem and so I was trying to match it.

[Callisse J. DeTerre]

'AAHH!!'
the clammy fog swallowed the sound
'Quit it, now! Haha.'
my heart skipped as my breath was found
Put...your...arms...down.
and my feet seemed frozen to the ground

Nice job for writing on the fly. I agree with your assessment and recommendation to add an appeal to the senses to compliment the monologue. However, your revision changes the tone a bit, implying a twinge of ongoing fear through out, of the narrator wanting it all to be joke. I shied away from additional lines in this first draft as I didn't want to focus on the scene so much as the narrator. I believe I can approach it in this matter on a rewrite. If I were add to add a description of the scene, I don't think I could move past the example you've given.

Callisse, I wasn't trying to tell people what they should feel about the picture so if it doesn't scare you, that's fine.

The poem is true to how I felt about the pic. As I said before, "I admit your picture [of this clown] does [creep me out] a bit," but lacking the specific phobia, I would have been fearful out of being startled and assumed someone was trying to scare me. The attempt is unsuccessful and annoying until I start to doubt myself at the very end. This pic actually reminded me of a recently rerun episode of Little House on The Prairie where a young adolescent girl is raped by a man wearing a Harlequin clown-type mask.

I'm not sure about the punctuation and pauses. Sometimes, a poet has to find a balance between literal intent and literary art. I meant for their to be very distinct pauses where the periods are and for the words to be firm, but casual as if spoken by a person who is annoyed rather than scared and is trying to be patient with the prankster. However, it just doesn't read well as poetry, so I'd probably go with your suggestion on a revision.

As for the last two lines, the caps were meant to imply yelling as I ran away. The last line while part of the same sentence was meant to be, in contrast, spoken to the self. I understand your confusion. Both an additional line and a change in spacing might help. At this time, however, I'm not sure I'm motivated to rewrite the poem. I'll get to it at some point for the challenge of it, but I mainly replied to help stir interest in the thread. Hopefully others will be inspired to share.

[Fire Monkey]

I suspected I might not have the right feel in my suggested modification, but mostly I was trying to show the idea of how adding some lines like that could work - clearly the lines need to express the feel you want and not the feel I might give it. ;D

Although my parents used to watch Little House, I never could get into it so I didn't know about the episode you speak of, but the idea of that is not unlike some things I have seen in shows.

I did understand that the all caps line was shouted, that's what makes blending the two lines tricky - once I realized that was what you intended it was clear and easy to read, so it's just working out how the confusion could be over come without changing your intent.

I understand if you would rather not do a rewrite at this time - I'm just happy that you took the challenge and I hope it benefited you. That's my reason for doing it - to give people something that I hope will help them become better poets because I think that is something we can all work toward.

[diannet]

This is creepy!!! It's the first time I've stopped by...let me think about it a little while. I'm not going to sleep tonight!

[Fire Monkey]

I did warn you ... "don't look"

But you should be fine as long as you don't sleep in the woods ;D

[diannet]

Who said poetry can't be FUN!!! Firstly I appologise about the length but I got a little carried away!! Not for the squeamish!!!

The Clown

The tent was empty
Devoid of the laughter
That had once lingered
Now the deflated canvas
Is a shell
All life sucked out
I enter
to clean the remnants of that laughter
the sweetness of stale candy
hangs in the air
while sawdust irritates
and...”Ah CHooooooooowlllll”
My sneeze deafened
By a heart curdling howl
Both guttural and gurgling
As if it had ascended
From some deep murky cavern
It ached in my ears, as it engulfed the silence
Shuddering I raised my mop
At what...I couldn’t be sure
But the noise
Repeated as if only in my head
I dropped the mop
And grabbed my ears
Trying to push the sound from my head
A shadow loomed
Nerves pulsed
like moths at a light bulb
I looked up
THERE
standing before me
Larger than life
Strangely affected
The CLOWN
His crazy eyes like black marbles
His painted smile was a sneer
That revealed his razor sharp teeth
Blood hung from his mouth
he roared
His smelly breath propelling
Bloody saliva onto my face
Here is where I should have died...
Here is where I should turn tail and RUN
But an aficionado that I am of the Zombie genre
I picked up my bucket
Brought it down on his head
In a swift movement
I grabbed my broom
Broke it over my raised knee
And as the crazy clown
Stumbled in the dark
I plunged the sharp edge sticks into his heart
He gurgled, and gagged
But that was the end of the Zombie clown
And the beginning of Zombie Washers
Just call 007 Zombie
And we’ll be there in a flash
To clean up your crime scene
Zombie extermination....FREE!


©Dianne Turner 2011

[Brigid Briton]

Hi Tim,

Well, this has turned out to be quite an interesting challenge. The feeling I was attempting to convey (and apparently failed) in my poem was one of being a very young child again, one who depends on her "Mommy" to tell her the truth and to protect her from any and all marauding monsters that might come her way, and who suddenly finds that "Mommy" is either no longer listening, or even worse, no longer anywhere to be found, the implication being that the evil clown has come calling...



Brigid

[Fire Monkey]

Diannet: Well, no question you managed to express a lot of emotion and I'm pleased to see you also managed to keep it light. I had wanted to get something that avoided telling a story and instead just captured the emotion of the moment but hey, we can't always get what we want ;D You did show us emotion and mostly didn't tell us - in fact what you told us was the reaction you didn't give that most people would have. Personally I liked the poem even if it did more story telling than I had been looking for.

Brigid: Oh I did get the small child aspect and all, I was just suggesting that you might try to show the emotion more than tell it - ok, that's not quite it either, you didn't really tell us what you felt but rather the monologue implies it so really you did do what I had asked for, but I felt that you could have had a bit more use of things that show how you feel. It just felt like you could take it up a level more so I'm trying to encourage you to stretch just a bit farther. I always like to see people reach for the stars even if they can't reach that far because if you reach for the impossible, you have a better chance of finding just how much is possible. I like to see people discover just how much more they have than they think they have

[Fire Monkey]

Ok, I guess it's time for me to enter the challenge too - so I have something I wrote. Let's see what others think of my effort

The shifting fog soon finds some flaw
that slips it though my clothing
Along my spine the shivers slide
my body feels a loathing

It shouldn't be this cold outside
And somewhere near I hear a sound
what can make me feel like this
I think the reason shall be found

The ground like oatmeal thick and soft
resists my need to hurry
and as the light breaks through the fog
I see a cause for worry

My boiling blood that freezes hard
with throbbing echoes ringing
Has made me feel electrified
like someone's off key singing

{I changed the first word of the last stanza from "The" to "My"}

[diannet]

Thankyou Tim for this challenge...I haven't had this much fun in ages. It took me a while I kept thinking ooooh he's so creepy...that was last night. Anyway, it started spooky, and I felt it just had to end like the movies in the Zombie genre and I know you didn't want a story but I got carried away. Forgive me.

I liked your poem especially the ground like oatmeal thick and soft
and shivers SLIDING oooh that's says it all.
You know I thought my days of writing in this genre were over but I think you may have started something. It's just soooo much fun!!! Thank you! ;D

[Fire Monkey]

No need to apologize about getting carried away while writing a poem that's part of what poets do ;D

I'm glad you enjoyed the challenge. I think it's good to do things like this from time to time - it may not produce great poetry all the time but it stretches the mental muscles and makes us become better poets - at least I believe it does.

Thanks for the comments on my poem too.

[Callisse J. DeTerre]

Cool poem, Tim - nice use of imagery. I thought lines 7 and 8 were a bit weak compared to the rest of the poem, but don't necessarily need a rewrite - just an observation. One minor thing I would change is the word "The" to "My" at the beginning of Line 13.

Dianne, I liked your poem, even the zombie reference, but something about the ending did not sit as well with me as the rest of the poem. I'll have to think on it.

At your suggestion, I finally rewrote my original poem this inspired... As I want more feedback, I've posted it in the Rhyming Poetry Forum. Here's the link...poetry-here-and-now.proboards.com/index.cgi?action=display&board=rhymers&thread=328&page=1

[Fire Monkey]

I agree about line 13 and have just changed it.