Writing Help – by: Jack Thompson

Whether you are working for a small business, large corporation, or are a student, there are numerous sources that you can turn to for help with writing. Businesses need to be able to effectively communicate with their customers, their employees and their potential customers. Effective verbal communication is equally important, but nonverbal communication in the form of copy writing, article writing, press release writing, and more requires a certain level of expertise and experience. The typical small business wants to focus their efforts on their core business activities without spending too much time on projects that can easily be outsourced to consultants or freelance professionals. Many small businesses turn to freelancers to help them save time and money. For example, a certified public accountant opened his own accounting practice after working in another accounting firm for the last ten years. One of the ways he decided to search for new clients was to embark on an advertising and promotional campaign. Although some of his previous clients followed him to his new practice, he wanted to increase the number of accounts he currently handled. These accounts included various individuals and small businesses from around the town. Rather than hire new employees or handle the projects himself, he decided to hire a consultant through a freelance web site to work on copy writing for a local newspaper ad campaign as well as to help with press releases and company news distribution. By outsourcing these non-core business activities to an independent consultant, he is able to save himself time and money and also gets the expertise of an established professional who specializes in the types of writing that he needs assistance with. He decides to list his writing projects in a freelance marketplace and receives bids from independent consultants and freelance writers. He was able to choose a service provider based on factors related to cost, the service provider’s experience, references, and previous feedback from clients. All small businesses have a decision to make about whether to outsource certain projects or to complete the work in house. Using economics as a deciding factor, it makes sense economically for businesses to outsource writing projects when the projects are non-core business activities that do not contribute to the company’s bottom line.

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Large corporations use writing to effectively communicate on all levels of business. Business writing and corporate communications are essential elements that keep the public informed and give companies their corporate image. A company’s image, or its publicly perceived notion of credibility and reliability is extremely important to its bottom line. For example, upon its introduction many years ago an American car company introduced a car known as the “Nova”. After some time, it was discovered that the car was not selling well in many Spanish speaking countries. Because in Spanish, “No va” translates to “doesn’t go”, the car sales in these countries were dismal. Effective corporate communication can have far reaching effect. Ineffective corporate communication can result in lower sales as shown in the car sales example. Large corporations also need to be effective communicators with their current employees. Internal corporate communications are equally important and keep your employees abreast of company accomplishments, events and human resource issues.

Finally, students also need to be able to write effectively as well. Writing assignments can include writing essays, writing term papers, report writing, and thesis writing not to mention having to demonstrate writing ability in other subjects outside of English class. For example, law students need to be able to write not only persuasive but argumentative writing as well. Foreign language students need to be able to translate into their native language and then back again. Science and technology students need to be able to demonstrate scientific writing ability. Taking writing tips from college professors that teach correct formatting and usage, including APA style, and improving your proofreading and editing skills will result in quality writing assignments. For the student that is looking for writing help and homework assistance for their assignments, freelance marketplaces that allow you to hire a consultant or tutor could be a productive and time saving solution.

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About The Author Jack Thompson is a freelance writer, business consultant and entrepreneur. He has helped thousands of individuals and businesses across the world realize the benefits of outsourcing. Independent consultants, freelance service providers, and companies looking to outsource service projects can post or bid on projects at www.smartylance.com.

English as a Medium For Indian-Writer – by: Samir K. Dash

In a paper at Regional Conference of the Association of Commonwealth Literature and Language Studies Held at India International Centre ,New Delhi on February23-6,1975,R.Parthasarathy , while exposing the position of Indian writers in English reffered to the comments of American poets Allen Ginsberg ,Gary Snycler and Peter Onlovsky: “If we were gangster poets we would shoot you”(1), his threat was direct against the Indian writers’ failure to take risk with the English language.

To explain the reason behind this R.Parthasarathy says that there at least two problems which prevent Indian writers to take the risk.First is related to the kind of experience he would like to express in English .

Indian who use the Emglish language gets in some extent alienated . This development is superficial and this is why many blame ‘Indian Writers in English’(IWE) as writers who present India in a foreign view-point .There work doesn’t contain a deep analysis of the Indian realities and Indian characters .

Many regional writers (many of who are even Jnapitha Awardees) say writing in English in India is a severe handicap as it tends to make their writing export oriented .Hindi writer Rajendra Yadav puts it as : “The IWE take a tourist look at India , like Pankaj Mishra’s The Romantics , where he is simply a tourist who does not know the inner psyche of people or a more clever device Vikram Seth uses in A S uitable Boy ,the pretext of looking for a bride-groom ,which takes him to different locales and professions . It is a creatively written travelers’ guide .They travel into our culture , describe a bit of our geography ; their total approach is a westerner’s :a third rate ‘serpant-rope trick’”

Many believe that IWE is circumscribed by what only westerner can appreciate :either exotica or erotica .Both these elements are visible in Ruth Prawar Jhabavala’s Heat and Dust .There is description of shrines , Sadhus ,Nawabs ,Princes and their castles along with sex and gay-parties and Hijraas .Jhabvala’s picture of princely India is extremely un realistic ,quixotic and pseudo-romantic .Similar is the case of Arundhati Roy’s The God of Small Things . B.Jaya Mohan in a recent interview to Out Look magazine (February 25 , 2002) said :”Writers like Roy are superficial and exotic .When Roy uses English to express a Malayalam idiom , it might be exotic for westerner , but for Indians it is not very exciting .”

Still there are writers in English for whom a little praise is made ,but that even by another English writer.In an obituary to R.K.Narayan in Time magazine ,V.S.Naipul writes :”His people can eat off leaves on a floor in a slum tenement ,hang their upper clothes on a coat stand ,do all that in correct English ,and there is no strangeness ,no false comedy ,no distance” But still regional writers believe ; ” …but any Tamil writer would have put more life into his novels than R.K. did”.

The battle of the first kind of problem guides us into the second and this is ‘ the quality of idiom the writer uses’ .R .Parthasarathy says that ” there is obviously a time lag between the living , creative idiom and the English used in India .And this time lag is not likely to diminish”.

It is because the historical situation is to blame .Besides there is no special English idiom ,either .English in India rarely approaches the liveliness and idiosyncrasy of usage one finds in African or West Indian writing , perhaps because of the long tradition of literature in Indian languages .

This is explained by Kannada d Oyen ” writers in Indian language have a rich back-ground — centuries old literary traditions,flok tales and life all round them — the IWE only have frontyard”.That’s why Rushdie draws fom the ethos and Hindi of Mumbai,while writers like Narayan draws from Tamil and Raja Rao from Kannada .But still the idiom they use lacks in liveliness, because “it’s impossible to transfer into English the cultural traditions and the associations of language”.This is why it is not surprising that writers in English tend to over emphasize their Indianness . This also explains why Michael Madhusudan Dutt after publishing thesis first book The Captive Lady(1849) in English turned to Bengali to become the first modern Indian poet .

While a regional writer can directly concentrate mode of writing the IWE has to face a complex problem—‘he has to go through the tedious explanations of the idioms he uses in his book ,leaving little space for creative writing’.

Perhaps Narayan was the only writer who never cared for such explanations .Naipul writes (Time,June 4 ,2001) :

“There is or used to be a kind of Indian writer who used many italics and for the excitement ,had a glossary of perfectly simple local words at the back of his book .Narayan never did that .He explains little or nothing;he talks everything about his people and his little town for granted”.

But this is not possible for every IWE writer who wants to perform an experiment in creative English writing .R.Parthasarathy explains in the context of his own position as an English poet with Tamil as his mother tongue . “English is a part of my intellectual, rational make-up Tamil my emotional ,psychic make-up”Hence it is he believes that every IWE feels that he has an unnecessary burden to do the explanation of the idioms he uses ,and My Tongue in English Chain is a theoretical statement of this problem.

Russian scholar E.J.Kalinikova in Problems of Modern Indian Literature (1975) also refers to this problem in G.Byol’s words :

“National colouring is like naivete’ ,if you realize you have it ,then you have already lost it […] Conception of the Indian through Indian eyes is natural,and this only determine the scope of literary subject”, where as an English writer ofIndia tries to give .The elements in a foreign language for which the whole experience of that element is strange and in the end what is produced is in Kamala Das’s words:

“It is halfEnglish,half Indian

Funny perhaps, but it is honest” [An Introduction]

To provide a compromise M.R.Anand writes in his essay Pigeon—Indian:Some Notes on Indian English Writing : “The real tests are different The first test is in the sincerity of the writer in any language .The second test may be in the degree of sensitiveness or individual talent”.

And in what this talent lie ?Anita Desai has the answer :

“I think I have learnt how to live with English language,how to deal with the problems it creats –mainly by ignoring them”

This view is supported by Henery James –”One’s own language is one’s mother ,but the language one adopts as a career, as a study ,is one’s wife[…] she will expect you to commit infidelities .On those terms she will keep your house well”

Perhaps that’s why IWE like Raja Rao have justified their own stand as :

“We can write only as Indians[…] Time will alone justify it”

[Introduction to Kantapura]

Every writer (especially poet) ,as many believe ,sooner or later suffers from ‘Aphasia’ or ‘loss of poetic speech’ .His poetry ought to ,from the beginning aspire to the condition of silence.This is similar to Rene’ Wellek’s notion on Endgame of Samuel Beckett :

“Samuel Beckett in Endgame has been looking for the voice of his silence”

But Wellek’s view is applicable to the living force that still move the Indian English writers’ pen on paper .

“The artist,s dissatisfaction with language can only be expressed by language .Pause may be a device to express the un expressible ,but the pause can not be prolonged indefinitely”.

So, in spite of the problems related to language and diction in use , the writers must keep on trying their best in carving out on them ,their creativeness on experimental basis ,because that may one day lead us to where we are now caving to reach.

About The Author Samir K. Dash Presently Samir is Director of an animation firm www.anigraphs.com For more articles by him visit www.samirshomepage.zzn.com samirk_dash@yahoo.com

Is the Formula of ‘Professor of Terror’, a Hoax? – by: Samir K. Dash

The most remarkable thing I found in Orientalism, the reputed revolutionary text by Edward Said — more famously dubbed as the ‘Professor of Terror’ since 1999 by the rightwing American magazine Commentary – is the point where he talks of the power-relationship of the knowledge of the Orient with the socio-political and ‘culturally hegemonic imperial projects’ of the West. Said at first in his book distinguishes between two types of knowledge – ‘true’ and ‘political’. He points out the consensus working in academia the idea that ‘true’ knowledge is non-political. Rather he argues that the supposedly apolitical scholarly works we involved in ‘interest’ and geo-political power relation, and hence the texts are un-detachable from power relation of political, cultural, intellectual, and moral domains.

And this he relates to all the interpretations done by the Oriental scholars and discoverers, and forms a kind of conclusion that “Orientalism” is born out of the imperial projects of the West, where when the next phase of Orientalists or scholars try to form any ontological statement about the Orient, they only contribute to the process of what he terms as ‘orientalisation of the Orient’. He then raises the methodological question on the procedures of interpretations which were used by the Orientalists like Renan, Sacy etc. and were based on ontological interpretations of the East. He sees these methodologies as a threat to the process of de-colonization movement of the present day where the attempt is made to bring ‘minor’ or ‘subaltern’ voice to a position of equality with the ‘major’. He sees it as a threat because he finds these methodologies as some kind of machineries that turn the supposed discoverers of the Orients in to the inventors.

And with this he comes to explain his own position as the most recent articulator of the Orient and talks of how he has used a new methodology in his text Orientalism. After this short introduction to Said’s Orientalism now I feel it is time that I articulated the aim of this paper. My aim in this paper is to examine, whether Said is successful in applying his new methodology in his text? Whether the belief of Said that his procedure to articulate about Orient is totally free from the faults which Said has charged against the other methodologies and scholarly interpretations of the East or the Orient, used by the Orientalists before him? And last , but not the least , that is he really contributing to the part of the world wide movement of de-colonization to mend the gap between the ‘Occident’ and the ‘Orient’?

Said from the very beginning emphasizes that Orient is not just a fixed geographical fact, but it is necessarily an idea that has some social, geographical and cultural dimensions attached to it and is centered round the geographical locations of Middle- East centered Asio-African region with varying circumference for different western eyes. Said’s conformation of ‘Orient’ as an imaginative product of Western mind and as a set of myths and lies, helps him to proceed in his aim of unraveling the imperial projects that were engaged in creating these myths. And here he shows how power relationship between knowledge and the imperial designs for a cultural hegemony of the non-Western ‘other’ works. The first phase of consciousness of the Orient ( at this point I mean European West) came through the consciousness of Christianity about another religious power in the ‘East’. ‘After Mohammad’s death in 632 A.D. , the military and later cultural and religious hegemony of Islam grew enormously […] Christian authors witnessing the Islamic conquests had scant interests in the learning , high culture and frequent magnificence of the Muslims, who were as Gibbon said, “ coeval with the darkest and most slothful period of European annals” […] For Europe Islam was a lasting trauma […] a constant danger’ (Said, 1995,p.59) . This consciousness of the West about the ‘Orient’, then became the part of a process where one culture sees the growth of other culture as a threat to its own existence and interprets it in terms of religious hegemony. This mode of power-relation of knowledge of the Orient was supported with militaristic hegemony of the ‘Other’ even centuries after French and British imperial designs like that of Napoleon in Egypt and East India Company in India and its neighboring ‘Orient’ areas. Whereas Napoleon planned a cultural invasion of the Egypt 9 along with the regular physical attempt to dominate it) and for which he engaged scholars in Egypt to use modern rhetoric as an weapon to conquer the Muslim minds, in India, East India Company carried out such plans under William Jones who convened the inaugural meeting of Asiatic Society of Bengal in 1784, and through which the West attempted ‘to rule and learn’ and then ‘to compare Orient with Occident’ (Said, 1995,p.78), so that a claim by the British can be made that an English man knows ‘ the Orient more and better than anyone else’ (Said, 1995,p.78). Such a project continued through modern times through Renan and Sacy. And these methodologies by the Western scholars , (along with some other personal impressions of the Orient by some well known individuals and authors like Flaubert in the terms of the erotic and exotic richness of the Orient ) as thus seen by said as an ontological approach to the Orient, that suffers more or less with some fault due to some kind of preoccupation of mind – either shaped by imperial political designs or personal preoccupations with some ancient myths and individual opinion formed on the basis of some kind of sensations of mind received in terms of physical or imaginative aspects of the Orient. So, Said sees danger in such kind of approach to the Orient, as it contributes in ‘orientalising the Orient’. And to solve this he adopts historical generalization methodology in his book Orientalism, where he slips from the ontological aspect to the epistemological aspect – he begins to stress on ‘how’ the concepts of Orientalism, Orient, Oriental came to be a part of consciousness than ‘what’ exactly they are. He believed that his articulation is the way out of the problem of contributing to the Orientalising process.

As it is a ‘re-reading of the canonical cultural works , […] to re-investigate some of these assumptions, going beyond the stifling hold on them of some version of the master slave relationship’ (Said, 1995,p.353). But in my opinion we can see Said’s text as another addition to the chain of contribution to the process of cultural hegemony. What I am talking here can be more clear if we refer to Trinh T. Minh-ha’s remark.

Trinh T. Minh-ha in her quasi poetic book Woman, Native, Other, refers to the raise of the new form of assigning marginality, especially in case of the ‘Third-World woman’. T Minh-ha’s point is somewhat related to the fact that the process of ‘advertisement’ is itself a kind of contribution to the sense of ‘marginality’. Though Minh-ha’s references are to the ‘Special Third World Women’s reading, workshops, meetings and seminars’ that goes on advertise the gap between the Third world and western world woman – where the ‘difference’ is expressed in the remarks ‘It is as if everywhere we go, we become someone’s private zoo’ (Trinh, 1989, p.82) . Now ours is a case which can be viewed in the light of these observations. In fact nearly all post colonial and subaltern studies involve this problem. Here we see that Said’s attempt was to make us conscious about the crisis by choosing a path of indirectness, where he can safely make us aware of it, without contributing to the crisis. But what we see that the process of making us conscious is a part of the process that brings again the very same problem , because after publication of Orientalism in 1978, it became a ‘source-book’ ( as Spivak terms it) for modern subaltern studies and there by contributing to the process of learning the Orient.

One may argue that by sleeping unto the epistemology from ontology, Said has started a process of ‘unlearning’ the Orient, but then my answer is – knowledge is always a part of binary opposition of its presence and absence. If once a reference is made that a process of ‘unlearning’ is to be made for the Orient, then there also underlies a consciousness about the fact of ‘learning’. It is very similar to Hegel’s master-slave relationship, where after freedom the slave in his attempt to be equal , does everything that his master used to did , and thus there underlies the fact that even after freedom the slave needs the identification of the ‘ex-master’ to define his own. He is in need to explain what his ‘master’ was like, so that he can prove that he is no longer like his ‘master’ and is therefore equal. So, we see the process of modern de-colonization is in fact a process of re-inscribing the colonization or the concept of the ‘major’ at the centre.

This fact is important in our discussion, because many of the postcolonial theorists consider Said’s Orientalism a representative of one phase of their discipline. For instance Leela Gandhi, in her book Postcolonial Theory refers to this aspect of Said’s Orientalism and gives example of Spivak, who ‘has recently celebrated Said’s book as the founding text or source-book through which marginality itself has acquired the status of a discipline […]’ (Gandhi, 1999, p.65).Again we can view Said’s work as the voice of a subaltern,( and therefore his work is historical too ) . His attempt to make the world conscious of the true crisis , in which Orientalism now exists , is seen as his act of ‘survival’ on the behalf of his Palestinian race(and that’s why his work has been considered as a ‘source-book’ ).

Thus we see that though Said’s attempt is to bridge that gap between the ‘major’ and the ‘minor’; the ‘Occidental cannon of consciousness’ and the ‘Oriental cannon of consciousness’, he has not succeeded in reaching this goal as he in fact contributed to the process of learning the Orient more, and thus raised some more questions –

After ‘unlearning’ the dominant mode called Orientalism, what should we learn? Or is the concept of learning to be discarded, because knowledge necessarily entails power relationship? And the most important question that arises is that when Orientals themselves are involved in inventing or more precisely speaking ‘orientalising the Orient’ is there any solution?

In the conclusion of my paper I want to add that it is not that, Said was not aware of this very problem – to make it more clear, he was rather sure of it and this is why he never saw his Orientalism as a part of ‘response to Western dominance which cultivated in the great movement of de-colonization all across the Third World’ (Said, 1993, p.xii)

But whether he sees Orientalism as what others see it or not, doesn’t matter as it has already contributed to the process of ‘orientalising the Orient’ against his wish. And this fact can not be denied, that anymore attempt to solve the tangle of complexities that involves with the Orientalism, will simply strengthen the crisis. In the same manner, perhaps my paper is also an addition, to that very process of ‘learning’ the Orient and hence contributes to the crisis. But the cause I can use to explain my position behind this whole affair that includes the writing of this paper, is some what near to what Said has thought himself – that ‘the writer is obliged to accept that he (or she) is part of the crowed, part of the ocean, part of the storm, so that objectively becomes a greater dream like perfection, and unattainable goal for which one must struggle in spite of the impossibility of success’ (Said, 1993, p.27).

References:

Gandhi, Leela Postcolonial Theory, Oxford University Press, New Delhi,1998

Said, Edward Orientalism, Penguin publishers, Harmondsworth, 1995 (First published 1978)

Said, Edward Culture and Imperialism, Chatto & Windus, London, 1993

Trinh T. Minh-ha Woman, Native, Other, Indian University Press, Cambridge

About The Author Samir K. Dash Presently Samir is Director of an animation firm www.anigraphs.com For more articles by him visit www.samirshomepage.zzn.com samirk_dash@yahoo.com

Absurdity of Absurd: Samuel Beckett’s Waiting for Godot – by: Samir K. Dash

What does ‘Absurd’ mean ?When I searched the glossaries ,I found the word to be ‘out of harmony’(1).But yet the definitions trying hard to explain the term , just to end in total ‘Absurdity’ (assuming for a while that we know the meaning of the word),as they talk in total sense, the nonsense about it and of course that means they fail(in their attempt ).But considering the term to be linked with literature (and other forms of art too!),when I searched for more I came across the lines that states that no ‘literary criticism’ [in which I include the attempts to explain the literary terms] can take the literary work itself ,or to be more specific ‘…it [literary criticism]is not substitute for reading the work itself’(2),as it [the piece of work]is the most exactly and precisely ,the thought conveyed or explained.So,I reached the idea that to understand ‘absurd’ .I must view an absurd work by an artist, rather than poring over the talks about it. Hence as a literary student what first came to my mind at this instant is none, but WAITING FOR GODOT by Samuel Beckett,the so called absurd play structured around ‘Godot’,the axis all absurdity[as till the date none could declare with confidence ‘who’ or ‘what’ Godot is !]

What I found in the dustbin of my memories about this godot is:

“On 19 Nov 1957, a group of worried actors were preparing to face their audience . The actors were members of the company of the San Francisco Actors’ Workshop . The audience consisted of fourteen hundred convicts at the San Quentin penitentiary . No live play had been preformed at San Quentin since Sarah Bernhardt appeared there in 1913 .Now ,fourty four years later ,the play that had been chosen ,largely because no woman appeared in it , was Samuel Beckett’s WAITING FOR GODOT’(3). …”Beckett real triumph ,…came when WAITING FOR GODOT which appeared in book form in 1952,was first produced on 5 January 1953 , at the little Theatre de Babylone (now defunct ),…’(4)

And I found also some lines of this play:

“…

ESTRGON:Didi.

VLADIMIR:Yes.

ESTRGON:I can’t go on like this.

VLADIMIR: That’s what you think.

ESTRAGON:If we parted?That might be better of us .

VLADIMIR:We’ll hang ourselves tomorrow.(Pause)Unless Godot comes.

ESTRAGON:And if comes?

VLADIMIR:We’ll be saved

…”(5)

It is said about Beckett that when he was asked that what he meant by Godot he answered “If I knew ,I would have said so in the play”(6).’WAITING FOR GODOT does not tell a story ;it explores a static situation ‘(7).So it is clear from the very beginning that Beckett tried to create a ‘character’ with out a character’ as he himself doesn’t know him [Godot], and again the movement of plot tends to zero ,i.e. there is absolutely no plot . Previously it was taken for granted that if there exits a literary piece then there must be either a story( or plot) to tellor any character to be represented .But did exactly opposite to revolutionize his concept .He presents a ‘character’ whom he himself does not know and tell a plot which is nothing but variations in arrangements and sequences of few events with negligible movement or action :’nothing happens , nobody comes nobody goes …’ (8).

But can be the term ‘Absurd’ assigned to merely these qualities of the play? No, there are still more as mentioned by critics .In an essay on Kalfka ,Ionesco defined his understanding of the term as ‘ Absurd is that which is devoid of purpose…’(9).And the purposeless becomes evident when ‘ the more things change , the more they are the same ‘(10).And this is done by creating uncommon situations in the play by Breckett . For instance the boy who carries message of Godot to Estragon and Vladimir fails to recognize them on each day of his reappearance .”The French version explicitly states that the boy who appears in the second act is the same boy as the one in the first act , yet the boy denies that he has even seen the two tramps before , and insists that this is the first time he has acted as Godot’s messenger’(11).And this is done while ‘waiting’ which is interpreted by Martin Esslin as ‘Waiting is to experience the action of time , which is constant change . And yet , as nothing real ever happens , the change is itself an illusion .The ceaseless activity of time is a self defeating purposeless…’(12).

And thus by this purposelessness Beckett tries to prove the absurdity of his play .But is this really absurd ? If we view it from some different point of views we can suddenly find something contradicting . It is because we know the fact that ‘ truth is never real’ ,and what we define for a situation becomes a truth for us , for that moment . So is the case of abnormality or normality of a situation . When any action is most common that becomes ‘ normal ‘ for us and this is the very base of our understanding .We understand what is most common and general .We understand something uncommon by referring it to some common things or actions we understand .So our very base of understanding is based upon some general truth or common events ,the state which we call normal .Now when we something out of order in a play (e.g. WAITIG FOR GODOT) ,we interpret it in terms of those ‘ commons’ of our memory .But on this view we analyze , can uncommon or absurdity be perceived by us directly without any aid or reference to our definition of ‘normality’ ? It is similar to what Rene’ Wellek tried to explain in his essay ‘ATTACK ON LITERATURE’ by citing an example of Samuel Beckett’s ENDGAME .Becket has portrayed a character in END GAME who was ‘ looking for the voice of his silence ‘(13).’The artist’s dissatisfaction with language can only be expressed by language .Pause may be a device to express the inexpressible ,but pause can’t be prolonged indefinitely ,can not be simply silence as such . It needs contrast , it needs a beginning and an end…’(14).

This statement suggests the importance of contrast and this is as true in case of absurdity and non-absurdity as it is true in the case of silence and music .

In this light we can reach decision that there is no sense of absurdity with out the normality . But how this is true in case of Godot can be analysed as follows :

Beckett tries hard to achieve absurdity by doing through his characters , the abnormal things (or at least normal things in abnormal sequence ), still there remains the elements of non-absurdity in every corner of the play . The boy who doesn’t recognize the two tramps bring message from the same Godot (It never happens ever that Godot brings a message from the boy ;or the tramps bring message from the boy to godot ;or tramps speak out the message that the boy brings from the Godot for them ;or Godot never receives message from tramps and so many can be the absurd case ).It was only one angle of interpretation of the situation .Other interpretations can be many in numbers :Godot waits for tramps ;or tramps don’t wait for Godot while they say they waited. etc. etc.

When I mean to say is that whatever action is done in the play has there fore the elements of non-absurdity .We could have recognized them if what we call absurdity would be the most normal and what we now feel normal would have been absurd .In fact we can’t express absurdity itself and this is the deceiving nature of ‘Absurdity’ , because the moment we speak out something it becomes a little different from what we originally meant to express . ‘Words , the medium of fiction ,are a fabrication of man’s intellect .They are a part of human lie ‘(14).And for this reason any literature needs that medium to be expressed , that becomes deceptive .So Roland Barthes of France says therefore that ‘Literature is a system of deceptive signification…emphatically signifying ,but never finally signified ‘(16).

There fore what ever actions Beckett tried to fabricated in to the play , stands till today between in the limits of absurd and non-absurd and how this action is nearer to any of these two limits depends on what words are used and how they are used to define the limits .

That’s why the play ‘..of the supposedly esoteric avant-grade make so imidiate and so deep an impact on an audience of convicts…’(17),where as the critics could not easily accepted the play as an art in the beginning .

Martin Esslin writes : ‘ because it confronted them [the prisoners] with a situation in some ways analogous to their own ? Perhaps . Or perhaps because they were un sophisticated enough to come to the theater without any preconceived notions and readymade expectations ,so that they avoided the mistake that trapped so many established critics who condemned the play for its lack of plot ,development , characterizations , suspense or plain common sense ‘(18).And of course this is what we see as the attempt to define absurd with non-absurd .Similarly many other attempts have been made in the past and present to create uncommon out of common .For example the Dadaist Movement . ‘Attempts have been made not only to widen the realm of art ,but to abolish the boundery between the art and the non-art . In music , noises of machines or the streets are used ; in painting, collage uses stuck-on news papers , buttons , medals and so on , or ‘found objects’ –soup cans , bicycle wheels , electric bulbs , any piece of junks—are exhibited . the newest fad is ‘earth works’ , holes or trenches in the ground , tracks through a corn field , square sheets of leads in snow . A ‘sculptor’ , Christo wrapped a million square feet of Australian coastline in plastic . At 1972 Bicnnale in Venice , a painter ,Gino de Dominicis , exhibited a mongoloid picked up from the streets as a work of art .In poetry poems have been concocted by the Dadaists by drawing news paper clippings from a bag at random ; more recently poems have been produced by computer and a shuffle novel (by Marc Saporta ) has appeared , in which every page can be replaced by another in any order …’(18).

Similarly we can cite the example of Pop-Culture now so popular by the young generations ,which was once considered as absurd .So what conclusion we reached can be seen in the light of that contrast theory of silence and music told in this essay in the beginning , that what ever we want to express (may it be ‘Silence’ or ‘Absurdity’ ) we need words to express . But ‘a word can never be a thing ‘(20).So we can either achieve a situation or express it , but we can not do both because , if we try to do , the situation won’t be the same .This is what we can imply when we speak of absurdity ; i.e. we can’t be totally absured in expression as there is no proper medium exists .

By concluding this I think I have reached at the ‘ right place at the right time’ , because if I am right then I will reach the right thing , but if I reach the wrong (as I will get non-sense)that will be rather a right thing due to our context . My attempt of criticism , ‘ is an attempt to make us more reasonable’

About The Author Samir K. Dash Presently Samir is Director of an animation firm www.anigraphs.com For more articles by him visit www.samirshomepage.zzn.com samirk_dash@yahoo.com

The Stool Pigeon and the Indian Lake – by: Irving Itchy Bronsky

It never occurred to me that Norman would chicken out and become a stool pigeon. He was aggressive, a good athlete, a gambler, (for baseball cards and streetcar transfers), a veteran explorer of our neighborhood and Crotona Park. He was a very persuasive talker, a take-over guy and besides, he loved banana and mustard sandwiches. It was his idea that we organize a trip to the Floyd Bennett Airport. When he squealed to his mother about our plans we labeled him…But that will come with this story.

We were nine years old that bright, summer morning in 1933, when Norman told us about an airport “just on the other side of Crotona Park.” (When I was older, I learned that it was about thirty miles south of my home, on an island off the coast of southern Queens.) There were five of us in the group and the other four had just finished playing “off the bench.” This game is played with a “Spaldeen,” a pink, soft rubber ball which is thrown against the slatted wooden back of a concrete bench that stands on the park side of Fulton Avenue.

Our neighborhood consisted of one ‘block,’ from 174thstreet to 175th , the park on one side; on the other was a row of ten, 5-story buildings, with four apartments on a floor. (The average family had 3-6 children.) We were luckier than most ‘blocks’ that had 5 story tenements on both sides.

“Off the bench:” There are two players to a side and on the fielding team one player stands in the street and the other on the opposite sidewalk. (In the early 1930’s there was hardly any motor traffic or parked cars on Fulton Ave.) You scored when the thrown ball rebounded off a slat and bounced in the gutter or on the opposite sidewalk. One base for every bounce, four bounces, a home run. Since I was one of the worst players on the block I was not picked in the first choosing of sides.

The game had been long and exciting and it finished in great style when Norman hit a home run, an uncatchable smash which reached the building on the other side of the street and fell into the cellar. I cheered this magnificent shot and then announced that it was my turn to pick. I would choose the best player from the losing side to be my partner. Not to be.

Norman announced in his super-confident voice that there would be no more games since we would all go to Floyd Bennett Airport. “I know it is just on the other side of the park. We can walk there.” I was angry for not getting my pick and I argued loudly with him but as usual, his decision was final; there would be no more “off the bench” that morning. .

There were four of us sitting on the bench and Norman stood facing us. His spiel was seductive and easily led us to agree to going to the airport. I suggested that we take along sandwiches. This idea was happily and immediately accepted. We agreed to take sandwiches from home, telling our mothers that we wanted to have a picnic lunch in the park. The five of us dispersed homeward to prepare for this great adventure: Norman, Tevie, (Herby), Lobo, (Natie), Putzie, (Paulie), and myself, Itchy, (Irving.) I had never questioned the fact that Norman was the only one without a nickname

Flinging open the door of my house, I rushed into the kitchen, finding my mother busy preparing lunch. I breathlessly told her about our idea of having a picnic in the park and she bought it without any questions. I told her that Tevie, Lobo, Putzie and Norman were my picnic companions and they were bringing sandwiches, and I wanted to bring them too. Momma sliced four thick slabs of seeded rye bread and heavily spread butter on them. She made two jumbo sandwiches filling them with a “feinkuchen,” (omelet.) She put them in a brown paper bag and handing it to me she said, “Don’t go too far in the park.”

There were four of us waiting by the bench for Norman. He was late. We were eager to get going and as time went by I volunteered to go to his home to find out when he was coming. I ran up the double set of steps of the courtyard of Norman’s building, (the only building on the block with a courtyard,) and standing under his kitchen window I shouted up to him. His head popped out of the kitchen window, as if he had been waiting for me. He had a big bulge in his cheek and he was chewing slowly. In his right hand he was holding a banana and mustard sandwich. He told me to come up. I did.

He was waiting for me by his open apartment door and motioned for me to come in. We stood in the all of his apartment and he whispered to me, “You don’t know what happened. Somehow my mother guessed we were going to the airport and now I have to stay home. What lousy luck.”

She called from the kitchen, asking us to come in. When I walked in she bent down and gently pinched my cheek, saying, “I love your rosy cheeks and your freckles, Itchy.” She offered to make me a banana and mustard sandwich as she had for Norman; I backed up a bit and politely refused.

Norman supported his mother saying, “My mother is right. It’s no good to go past the Indian Lake. If you ask me, you don’t know what’s on the other side.” I mumbled, “It ain’t so far,” and ran out of the apartment. When I came out into the courtyard and was skipping down the upper set of steps Norman shouted behind me, “You can’t miss it. It’s just on the other side of the Indian Lake.”

The four of us entered the park, heading in the direction of Indian Lake and hopefully, the airport, on the other side. The park is about a mile wide and we were no more than half way across when we were attracted by the cheering noises of a large crowd coming from the city stadium. Putzie suggested that we detour there because “They have baseball games with uniforms and even umpires, guys in black suits.” Putzie was the best athlete on the block and his recommendation was quickly accepted. He led the way, running quickly and easily, with Lobo right behind him. Tevie and I were struggling to keep up.

There was a baseball game in progress and the players wore uniforms; this was the first time I had ever seen uniformed play. There were two men dressed in black suits, wearing small, black, peaked caps, and I easily identified them as the umpires. The contest was between two semi-professional teams, one from a west side neighborhood of the Bronx and the other from our east side. (The west side of the Bronx was the “rich” side and the East side was the “poor” side. Of course we immediately picked sides and lustily cheered the “East Bronxers.”

Putzie was the only one who had seen a major league game, the New York Yankees, the “Bronx Bombers,” at the Yankee Stadium in the west Bronx.. We knew about the Yankees from the radio broadcasts that I sometimes heard in the candy store, when the older fellows asked Mr. Nathan, the owner, to put on the game. Some of my bubble-gum tickets had pictures of Yankee players.

It was fascinating to see my first real baseball game, in a stadium, a small one, but still with a laid-out playing field. All the previous games I had seen were sandlot games. The stands were full and the noisy, enthusiastic crowd roared its approval at anything the home team did. The first base and third base foul lines were lined with children sitting on the ground. We found seats on the foul line just past third base and we settled comfortably onto the dry, dusty earth. The Indian Lake and Floyd Bennett airport were forgotten. After fifteen minutes of joyful spectating, something happened to make us continue with our original mission.

A grounder, hit just foul, down the third base line would have hit Putzie in the head but he ducked in time, avoiding a disaster. This near-accident prompted the umpires to clear both foul lines. We had to move behind the home plate wire-screen where the people and children obstructed the view of the game. Tevie, the oldest of our group, reminded us of our original destination by pointing in the direction of Indian Lake. “What about it, guys? Do we stay or go? Which is it?”

After a brief discussion, Lobo, the natural leader of our group, quietly resolved our conflict. Firmly, clearly, he said, “The airport. That’s where we’re going, right?” We were on our way. A few minutes later we found ourselves standing on the top of a hill, the Indian Lake below us, and beyond that, Boston Road and Claremont Parkway. The lake seemed so big and deep and there were rowboats. (That there was no airport seen, we didn’t even think about at that time.)

I had been to the lake the first time, the year before, with my siblings. We accompanied Zaydeh (my maternal grandfather) to the lakeside, so that he could “throw away his sins.” Just prior to Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement, Zaydeh, the president of our Fulton Avenue schul, (synagogue) led the male congregants pond-side, for the ritual dumping of their sins into the water. Afterwards, the men stood around talking, gossiping, mingling with hundreds of other sin-throwing worshipers from other schuls in the area.

While my Zaydeh was chatting, my brother Sid and I explored the lake. We walked to the end of the lake where the rowboats were tied up and heedless of the danger we tried to climb into one. The park attendant responsible for the boats gruffly growled at us, “Scram, you snotnoses before I kick your asses for you.” We ran back to the safety zone of Zaydeh’s area.

There was a roundish, six-foot high boulder adjacent to the lake, more than twice my height. This was the Indian Rock, with a brass embedded dedication plaque in its side, and little steps carved in its side, leading to its top. Sid was the first one up and for a few moments he wouldn’t let me climb to the top, shouting, “I am the King of the hill.” This brought a sharp rebuke from Zaydeh, who told my brother not to disturb the seriousness of the situation. It also allowed me to make it to the top.

Sitting peacefully on top of the Indian Rock, we talked about the western movies that we sometimes went to Saturday afternoons at the Deluxe movie, or the Fenway, both within walking distance from our home. Based on the good-guy, bad-guy movies, it was easy to project the Indian Rock into a fort.

Suddenly, coming out of my reverie, I realized that I was famished and the powerful odor coming from my butter-stained, brown bag enhanced my appetite. I took out one of the sandwiches, waved it around, saying, “Listen, guys, let’s eat something and then we’ll be ready to charge down the hill to the lake. What do you say?” There was a brief moment of hesitation but when Tevie took out one of his sandwiches and bit deeply into it, that was the signal for all of us to sit down to eat.

We ate quickly, except for Tevie. We were up and around, restlessly waiting for him to finish, anxious to make the charge down the hill to Lake and its besieged fort, the Indian rock. Even before Tevie took his last bite we began to run down the hill. Putzie was in the lead, with Lobo behind him and I was just one step ahead of Tevie. Suddenly I noticed a dollar bill lying on the side of the asphalt path and I stopped running, transfixed by what I had discovered.

I called out, “Hey, look. There’s a buck on the ground.” Before I could pick it up Tevie had scooped it up, saying loudly, “It’s mine. I found it. No aikies.” According to street law if he said this before anyone could say “Halfie no aikes,” then he didn’t have to share his find. I said, “It ain’t fair, no. I saw it first. C’mon Tevie, be fair.” He refused, repeating, “No aikies.” I doubled the loudness of my demand but he refused, finding a new excuse, sing-songing, “Finders keepers, losers weepers.”

Lobo mediated the dispute by convincing Tevie that the four of us should share the dollar; I accepted the compromise. The usually gentle Tevie grumbled his acceptance of Lobo’s wise decision. We forgot the airport, we forgot the lake, forgot the Indian rock. Instead we headed in the direction of the street on the other side of the park. There were stores there and we agreed that we would go to a candy story where each one of us could buy to his heart’s delight, what he wanted with his twenty five cents.

Just before we left the park we saw a man with a pony, selling rides for a nickel each. Without a word we made a new decision about what to do with the money. For the next hour we were living in the wonderful world of the Wild West. Each of us had five, rip-roaring, bronco-busting rides on the docile pony. It was like in the movies where my favorite cowboy, Buzz Barton, always got the bad guy; the only kiss at the end of the movie was to his horse. Then he rode off at the end, into the sinking sun, the lone rider.

When our money ran out we stood around for a few minutes watching other children have pony rides. Then Putzie brought us out of our western fantasy life by shouting, “The last one to the Indian Rock is a rotten egg.” I was the rotten egg, since I got a late start and even Tevie beat me.

While the other three were climbing onto the rock, playing “Cowboys and Indians” I took off my sneakers and socks and sat on the paving-stone lake rim. I dangled my feet into the cool water and by sliding slightly forward, I could just reach the muddy bottom. The soft sliminess of the silted bottom was pleasantly sensuous as I moved my feet in and out of it. The muddy waters coming up to the surface fascinated me.

I was shocked to hear a park attendant shouting at me, as he ambled in direction. I hastily withdrew from the water and gathering up my sneakers and socks I ran part of the way up the hill. He stopped and pointed his long arm accusingly at me and gruffly yelled at me, “What do you want to do? Get yourself drowned or something?” I retreated a little further up the hill. With a grunt of disapproval and a dismissing wave of his hand, he moved off.

Resocked and reshod, I joined my friends by the rock. They were playing “Cowboys and Indians.” Lobo and Putzie were on top, “in the fort,” and Tevie had been unsuccessfully storming it. I joined him and the both of us were unsuccessful in getting to the top. I complained loudly that it wasn’t fair so we switched. Tevie and I were the brave defenders of the fort and Putzie and Lobo were the Indians. Somehow, they succeeded in getting to the top.

I didn’t care because we were having a great time. After a while we got tired of the game and we began to play tag. When we tired of that game we walked to the end of the lake (that was about fifty yards wide and 25 across,) where the rowboats were moored. We watched two couples take out two boats. We discussed the possibility of getting a rowboat but realized that we couldn’t, because we had no accompanying adult and we had no money.

We moved to a new part of the lake and began to skip flat stones across the surface, competing to see who could get the most bounces. It was Putzie, of course. We watched a man fishing with a thin string and a u-shaped pin for a hook. He had a ball of dough at his feet and he pinched off a piece, finger-rolled it into a little bait-ball and put it on the end of his improvised hook. Then he threw it into the water.

Four times he pulled his line out of the water without the bait on it. Then it happened. The fifth time the line jerked in the water. He pulled gently on it and then more strongly. With a swift motion he pulled his hook out of the water and wiggling desperately on it was a two inch fish. He plucked the fish off his hook and put it into a glass jar, half-filled with lake water. I watched the little darter in his glass jail, feeling sorry for it.

Somehow, watching the trapped fish reminded me of Norman and I reminded the group that we never got to the airport. The rest of the group was just as surprised as I was that we had forgotten about it. We were hungry and it was too late in the day to go on. We decided to make the trip on another day. Lobo looked towards home, saying that it was late in the day and it was time to start back. Without waiting for the others I took off, shouting, “The last one up the hill is a rotten egg.” This time Tevie was the rotten egg.

The return trip was quick and uneventful. When we got to Fulton Avenue we saw a crowd of people standing in front of the new buildings. My mother and father were there, along with my two brothers and sister. In the same worried cluster were Putzie’s parents, Tevie’s mother and father and Lobo’s mother and oldest sister My heart began pounding and I had trouble breathing. I knew I was going to be punished.

I felt worse when Norman came running towards us, shouting, “You guys are in trouble. You’re going to get it. What took you so long? Did you get to the airport? Everyone has been going crazy looking for you.” Before anyone could answer he told us what happened. His mother told my mother and she had contacted the other three mothers. Putzie’s older brother was sent to look for us around Indian Lake but we were at the stadium at the time. Later in the day, as the anxiety increased, Tevie’s father and my father, both out of work at the time, went to look for us. We were probably wild-westing it with our pony at the furthest reaches of the park, and when they returned without us the rumor spread that we had been kidnapped.

My mother tearfully embraced me, kissed me repeatedly and thanked God for bringing me home safely. Then with a serious look and a stern command, she ordered me to go “upstairs.” My father’s red-faced angry looks made me fearful that I was going to get a beating. He had never beaten me before although he had spoken of it, occasionally reached for his belt, or gave me a stern look. That was enough to scare me into behaving.

When I was upstairs, sitting in the kitchen, hungry and apprehensive, my mother came in alone. She gave me something to eat which I was unable to enjoy because I didn’t know what form the punishment would take. Hanging on the wall above the table was the Lukshen Strop, (the noodle strap), the cat-o-nine tails, and looking at it made me shiver fearfully.

My mother decided to use her own instrument of punishment and I was momentarily relieved that it wasn’t going to be a whipping. She began her tongue lashing, constantly repeating in a quiet, tense voice, “How could you be such a bad boy. You’ll kill me. After all the sacrifices I made for you children.” I remembered that when I was a few years younger she had done the same thing when I was a “bad boy.” She talked and talked until I cried hysterically for her to stop.

I cried long, I cried hard. I promised again and again that I would never again do anything like that. That ended the first round. Then she started guilt-whipping me again about making her suffer, about shortening her life, and I cried and repented, and then repented and cried. Finally, I was sent to bed with a full stomach, loaded with remorse, promises to be good and heavily burdened with guilt.

The following day when the guys met, we decided that Norman had tattle-taled; one of the others called him a stool pigeon. From that moment he became Stooley. He finally had a nickname like the rest of us.

About The Author Irving Itchy Bronsky See my webste: www.irving-bronsky.com bronskyirving@hotmail.com

The Subject And Object Theory – by: Tushar Jain

I am Tushar Jain, a student of literature. This subject, literature, is one which is susceptible to every clause scripted, every letter sculpted, and is liable to get one enamored by vacuous words like ‘subjective’. To the wholesome degree of which the students believe in the language, there is but a similar degree that coerces them to refute and impugn its likewise liabilities.

Recently, in a class, I had all the inconvenience of a teacher’s dilatory eyes boring into mine, and an arbitrary buffed nail earmarking my attendance in the room; eventually she flicked a question at me,

“How are the characters in the novel connected?”

The sludge of pacing words in a soporific room, filled with irascible impatience and derivative petulance. I couldn’t connect to what she said until a later second and replied in a baritone, ensemble of an answer most suited, “by freedom and perspective.”

“No, by imagination and memory,” she snapped back. This is the kind of strain you’ll see ostensible in a class where an accretion of both, enslaved and free minds saunter. Concisely put, we need to hope fairly for the convictions an authority lays down for us, or else, we are forsaken to the roads less traveled.

On my way home, my way across a flight of stairs, my way about the sun-lit sidewalk – I literally dreamt of what had passed, whether I had been wrong or had the authority misjudged to the convenience of our simpleton mindsets, yet bourgeoning. I came to a conclusion and that is what this article is pretty much about – the subject and object theory.

In life, in books, in writing and in reading, i.e., any form of self-indulging, whenever factual, fictional or prejudiced relations are meant to be taxed, there stands an exclusive ground that gauges each to each without exceptions – the dogged tolerance of a subject and an object.

The subject, by characteristic, is more substantial; this is what obligates two things to be related. The object is the antithesis, the infraction of the above said; it is the juncture by which the same two things are naturally related, are invariably kindred. Subject, more often than not, is consequential of the two while the object is the feeling that is mutual to any two strangers that can be deemed to exist. Both of them subsist at counters, at contention and at contrary moments to each other. While the subject encompasses more substance than the object, only the object is the foundation where the subject is either incipient or deadened.

That is the theory and if it sets in limberly, trying to construe any kind of liaison between members, people, characters, etc. becomes profligately simple and exact. You see, whenever we talk of connecting things in certain, we must pamper merely the sheerness of reality and not obnoxious pigheadedness.

Now, as a paradigm of analysis via the subject and object theory, lets take into account and beckon the above-held circumstance.

The distinction between ‘freedom and perspective’ and ‘imagination and memory’ is appositely what the subject and object theory jostles or throws into place. ‘Freedom and perspective’ are pragmatically correct – where freedom is the subject and perspective is the object, i.e., through dissimilar perspectives of myriad characters or people, one can view the one general reflections on freedom. This is what places them in a common nexus, this is how they connect. Conversely, in the case of ‘imagination and memory’, both of them are barely subjects, vilely innate ones at that.

Now, for a more authentic opus of the theory, we choose human guinea pigs – myself and the teacher, let us suppose. In the class, the teacher and I confronted with deferential, cogent relations of a teacher and a student. However, if we were to encounter histrionically on the street, there is nevertheless another kind of relation – a universal, middling boy and girl kinship that is bound to imply. The former is the subject and the latter is the object. The neutrality and average of either is the relation we bear.

Relations are constructs, moral and social. Their hypothesis is need, and their motive is a circumstance of need. We must constantly be at fault when we endeavor to discern them, for perfect relations like perfect morality or perfect sociality, remain but in gaping, rife spaces of books.

About The Author Tushar Jain Hello, any queries? Please feel free to contact – mosaics12@rediffmail.com

10 Ways To Generate New Articles Ideas And Topics – by: Ken Hill

1. Brainstorm for new ideas.

Add your brainstormed ideas to an idea file that you can go back to when you are stuck for a topic.

Also add ideas you get from other sources into this file so that you’ll always have a fresh source of inspiration.

2. Visit forums and message boards.

Look for an interesting topic or thread in the posts that you can turn into a new article.

3. Check out newspapers and news programs.

Depending on what you like to write about, you could find some new hot topics.

4. Subscribe to e-zines that reach your target audience.

You’ll be able to get new, relevant information that could spark an idea for an article.

5. Review your own articles.

Keep your eyes open for things that you touch on in your articles that you could expand into a full article.

Also look for ways to further educate your readers on the topics that you’ve written about in the past.

6. Read other people’s articles.

You could look over the submissions to article announcement lists and article directories, or you could visit a site that has articles you enjoy reading.

You might be able to come up with an original slant that the other author didn’t cover in her article or a topic that you could research for your next article.

7. Use questions you get from your subscribers, visitors, or customers for ideas.

Questions that you get on a regular basis can be an excellent source of new ideas and topics that will appeal to your target audience.

8. Go to a seminar or marketing conference.

In addition, to finding more new article topics, you’ll be able to learn new things and gain more contacts.

9. Conduct an interview.

You’ll be able to get a new article from the interview itself.

The person you interview could also bring up things in their responses that you could do some research on for a new article.

10. Run a survey.

Ask your participants what topics they’re interested in learning more about in your e-zine or on your site, and you’ll be able to get more new ideas and topics.

About The Author Article by writer, Ken Hill. Save loads of time promoting your articles with this powerful tool for e-zine publishers and article writers. Learn more at: http://www.scstats.com/r.cfm?i=4604

Poetry Techniques – by: Gary R. Hess

The style of writing poetry differs from person to person; long or short meters, three or four lines to a stanza. But the great thing is, no matter how a poem is written it still holds great emotion. Some techniques used in poetry are onomatopoeia, alliteration, assonance, rhyming, simile and metaphor.

Onomatopoeia is one of the easiest to learn and use (but not spell). The definition of onomatopoeia is a word imitating a sound. For example; ‘buzz’, ‘moo’ and ‘beep’. This can be used in a variety of ways giving the reader a ‘hands on’ feel.

One technique that you might be familiar with is alliteration. This procedure is used by starting three or more words with the same sound. An example of this would be ‘The crazy crackling crops.’ The three words don’t have to have the exact same beginning to have this effect.

The next style is assonance. It is defined as a repetition of vowel sounds within syllables with changing consonants. This is also used in many different circumstances. One would be “tilting at windmills.” Notice the vowels within each syllable sound the same.

Rhyming is probably the most well-known technique used. However unlike popular belief, it does not need to be within a poem to make it a poem. It is what it is.. a technique.

As for similes, they are often used within poetry. They are an expression that compares one thing to another. A paradigm of this would be ‘The milk tasted like pickles.’ This method is used in all forms of poetry and generally has the words ‘like’ or ‘as.’

The last but not least style is metaphor. A metaphor is a word or phrase used one way to mean another. Metaphors are sometimes hard to spot and take some thinking to figure out, but they give writers more power to express their thoughts about a certain situation. One famous case where a metaphor is used is within ‘The Raven’ by Edgar Allen Poe. In fact, not only is it found within the story, the story itself is a metaphor of memory and the constant reminder of the narrator’s loss.

These techniques are seen throughout history within both famous and amateur poems alike. To have a full grasp of poetry onomatopoeia, alliteration, assonance, rhyming, simile and metaphor should be household words.

To view a more comprehensive definition list of go here: http://www.freepgs.com/poetryandmore/poetry_dictionary.php

About The Author Gary R. Hess is an author for http://www.freepgs.com/poetryandmore

When The Writer Is Dead – by: Tushar Jain

Imagine – the sun pouring in, the fingers feeding in on the typewriter, a turgid film of sweat on the gristly brow, a tackling writer milling in the temerity to finish a single draft, 700 words or maybe 7000 words. A kind of unremitting perseverance that is outlandishly unparallel to anything under the sun. This is not contextual dirge posed righteously… this is simply an irradiating connotation of righteous dirge posed contextually.

A vitalizing irony to the topic itself – a writer never does die. To earmark it justly – the instigating part of any type of local discourse on the Arden Shakespeare begins with – ‘he became immortal through his words.’ Immortality and death – the most converse of critical idioms, left again to a harmonizing irony.

Whenever we are forsaken with an irony, two condemned ilks of enlivening it are confronted – perspective and apathy. Perspective being the share of the dichotomy for a writer, and apathy being the same for a reader.

A writer’s perspective begins only and only after the realm of writing anything – then, he’s abounded with what critics claim to be ‘the intellectual’s coup de grace’ – all the languid and chronic mortifications that is the most natural element of any or every author. This is where the writer lives the bona fide work of his own majesty – concisely and yet more precisely, this is where an Edgar Allan Poe begets to be a ‘he’ instead of an ‘it’. Through the whimsical 60,000 words that embellish the art of a writer, none of them is a convivial doormat for his mortality. What sheens through is his individuality, that being in the curtailing circumstance of ‘George Washington and the cherry tree’ creed. Per se – P. G. Wodehouse was a prankster and a humorist in his days at Dulwich University – eventually, he scribbled down ninety-seven novels of inimitable farce that spanned his lifetime.

To say that for a reader, the sequentially apathetic bloke, a writer is dead is not only lackadaisical scurrility but also it is feasibly not being emphatic. You see, for a reader, a writer is never alive. He or she is basically an absurd, skewed name labeled on the spine of a book. In layman’s terms, if you were to avail yourself of prostitutes, the names would be the last piece of information you’d like to familiarize with. You’d be more inclined towards the material they are to offer rather than their proper designations in your sessions of ‘humping’.

Coming to terms with it – reading is classically like sex. Both are deeds to pleasure, both involve a climax and two partners are incorporated – the reader and the writer. Gauging the example warily, the pleasure is derived from the love making or contrastingly, the reading.

As is most common to knowledge that is beleaguered by sex and also by the ethical jurisprudence of true narcissism, one partner is penchant on deriving from the second. Consistently similar to the analogy, the reader is avid for his own interests – I iterate – for him, the writer does not exist. The pleasure does, the deed does – the doer doesn’t.

Now if the topic is veered to the most literal aspect of a writer being dead, then the reader ends up metaphorically, a necrophiliac.

This is the kind of inherent sterling imbroglio meshed around the whole principle of the thing – the indispensable, nettling discrepancy between death, extinction and realism. The notion that estranges one from the other is elusive and by all intents and purposes, controversial.

So, to say that a writer is dead is wrong. So, to say that a writer is momentous to the reader is wrong. So, to say that a writer never existed – is but only the better and less perplex part of wrong. Alas, that is the only kind of wrong to incur and cherish.

About The Author Tushar Jain I invite all criticisms and of course, praises are indispensable – mosaics12@rediffmail.com

Gaining Exposure Within Writing.Com – by: The StoryMaster

Dear Writing Reader,

One of the most popular questions from Authors on Writing.Com is: How do I gain exposure on Writing.Com?

In this letter, I will provide numerous tips for increasing the amount of exposure you receive on Writing.Com.

Tip #1: Utilize Our Newsletters!

Every week Writing.Com sends out over 140,000 issues of its 13 various newsletters. Each week, Newsletter Editors ask for questions and feedback from their readers. Each week we see many of the newsletters “Ask & Answer” sections go blank! Get easy, quick exposure by emailing Writing.Com Newsletter Editors and asking them questions to be included in their next issue.

Subscribe to newsletters that cover your favorite genres. Email the editors with questions pertaining to the genre, writing style or topic that Editor chose that week. In most cases, you will find your name, your question and a response in that Editor’s newsletter the following week. Readers of that newsletter will, more than likely, check out your portfolio!

Tip #2: Review, Review, Review!

Reading and rating are very important for writers, but when it comes to garnering eyeballs for your own work – nothing beats reviewing. When you review another author’s item, invite that Author to your own portfolio. Most of our Authors will be more than happy to check out your portfolio, since you were so kind to take a look first!

Review, review and then review some more. Correspond with other Authors on the site and you’ll be surprised how many more views your items get!

Tip #3: Plug Yourself In!

There are many In & Outs and Message Forums that are geared toward giving Writing.Com Authors exposure. Most of these are run by Authors themselves and receive heavy traffic. Writing.Com itself provides one that is linked from the “Item Jumps” pulldown menu.

Plug yourself without shame; utilize The Shameless “Plug” Page. Don’t be shy; start posting in message forums asking people to visit your portfolio. Tell readers a little about yourself, your portfolio and your writing style; you’re sure to gain new readers!

Tip #4: Win Exposure With Contests!

There are many contests run by Writing.Com members, as well! Participating in contests does not only give you the opportunity to win Gift Points, but also provides a free stage for you to flaunt your writing to others who are entering or judging that contest. Contests are easy to enter, give a wide variety of assignment and provide GREAT exposure whether you win or not!

Participate in contests! To start, you will find some by visiting Writing Contests @ Writing.Com!. You can also visit the “Contest” sub-type link from within the Static Item listing page.

Tip #5: Get BidClicking!

Now take the Gift Points you just won in the contests and Sponsor your items with the Writing.Com BidClick System!

My recommendation is to use the Genre and Item Type sponsorship opportunities. Extremely popular genres like Romance/Love, Action/Adventure, and Fantasy can be sponsored for under 25 Gift Points (or 1/4 of a penny)!

Placing items within applicable genres will generate highly targeted readers who are more likely to read, rate AND review your item; and it costs FAR FEWER Gift Points than the main Sponsored Items column!

If you want instant exposure to all of our visitors, you can bid a higher Gift Point price for the Sponsored Items listing. This listing is shown on the right-hand side of every page and is seen by every visitor to Writing.Com. We’ve seen items gain over 100 ratings in less than 24 hours when sponsored there!

Sponsor items within the Genre or Item Type listing pages. For even more exposure, try out the Sponsored Items area. For even more information on this, read The Writing.Com BidClick System!

I hope you found useful information within my letter; good luck and have fun!

~~ The StoryMaster (19)

About The Author The StoryMaster is WebMaster of Writing.Com ( http://www.Writing.Com/ ). Established in 2000, Writing.Com is the online community for readers and writers of all ages and interests. Whether you’re a casual reader searching for a good story or a creative writer looking for the perfect place to improve your skills, Writing.Com is the site for you! Over 293,848 members have joined and posted over 819,680 literary items.