Destinations and Dialogue

Monterey - Photobucket

Hello Toads.....Herotomost here. Oh my, I am pretty sure that I am on the verge of being kicked to the curb after the last couple of weeks not being around.  Been playing Hand Maiden to the Queen after she had knee surgery, so I have been a very busy boy. I am quite sure that I have Kerry squirming in her seat that I was never going to post anything...I keep her on her toes using my keen powers of procrastination!!!!

So you have guessed it, my turn for the guest challenge here in the Garden.  You know that I have little patience for form poetry, so anyone who is with me on that one can breathe a sigh of relief in knowing that  won't be the case today...that is unless you want to.  See, I am not one to follow rules, so imposing rules would be contradictory to my nature. Today we are going to talk about setting and dialogue, subjects usually reserved for fiction and prose, but in my estimation, just as important in poetry.  

First I am going to take you on a grand road trip to Monterey California (I hope everyone packed snacks and their best road trip mix tapes), via a little vehicle I like to call Steinbeck.  One of my favorite all time descriptive narratives describing a setting is on the first page of Cannery Row, and it goes a little something like this:

"Cannery Row in Monterey in California is a poem, a stink, a grating noise, a quality of light, a tone, a habit, a nostalgia, a dream. Cannery Row is the gathered and scattered, tin and iron and rust and splintered wood, chipped pavement and weedy lots and junk heaps, sardine canneries or corrugated iron, honky-tonks, restaurants and whore-houses, and little crowded groceries, and laboratories and flop-houses. Its inhabitants are, as the man once said, ‘whores, pimps, gamblers, and sons of bitches,’ by which he meant Everybody. Had the man looked through another peep-hole he might have said: ‘Saints and angels and martyrs and holy men,’ and he would have meant the same thing."

Gives me goose bumps every time I read it. I wish I could write like that. Awesome narrative and good believable dialogue makes any piece of writing for me.

Soooo....your assignment today if you so choose to participate (I won't be sad if you don't.....maybe a little, but no big deal, I will only cry a little, it might look like a lot, but I'm sure its just allergies...sniff) is to write a narrative about a place that is special, evil, nostalgic, beautiful, chaotic...whatever you want and try to nail the feeling that it gives you when you are there and confronted with its realness. This can be poetry, prose, technical writing...lol, I don't care.

Just to throw a little bit of challenge, I want you to sandwich your narrative between two pieces of dialogue, it can be someone talking to themselves, to some one else, doesn't matter.  It can be one line or a hundred, just keep it in context to the narrative and the feel of your description. Love me some dialogue.

Now that you have marching orders...I hope you aren't cursing me too much lets see what we can come up with.  I have yet to attempt the challenge myself but will post just as soon as I have something.