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Japanese Poetry and what It Taught Me

October 3, 2022

creativity, criticism, guest post, Igor Livramento, Japan, literature, poetry

Today’s post – “Japanese Poetry and what It Taught Me” – is authored by Igor da Silva Livramento. He’s a fellow academic from UFSC, fellow author, fellow creative-writing advisor, and overall a great fellow. He’s also a composer, music theorist, and producer. Check out his papers on Academia.edu, his music on Bandcamp, and his personal musings on his blog – in Portuguese, Spanish/Castilian, and English. You can also find him on LinkedIn.

Let me begin by saying:

明ぼのや
白魚白き
こと一寸。

I mean:

akebono ya
shirauo shiroki
koto issun.

Which I will translate as:

White light,
white fish,
an inch of bright.

This poem, by the famous haiku writer Matsuo Bashō, gave me so much to think about. But before I discuss that, let me do a brief analysis of the poem.

japanese literature — Japanese poetry is an ode to simplicity

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Similes in the Iliad: The Horrors of War

September 12, 2022

Criticism, Literature

criticism, guest post, Igor Livramento, metaphor, reading, symbolism

Today’s post – “Similes in the Iliad: The Horrors of War” – is authored by Igor da Silva Livramento. He’s a fellow academic from UFSC, fellow author, fellow creative-writing advisor, and overall a great fellow. He’s also a composer, music theorist, and producer. Check out his papers on Academia.edu, his music on Bandcamp, and his personal musings on his blog – in Portuguese, Spanish/Castilian, and English. You can also find him on LinkedIn.

I know this must be one of the most common themes of all time. Any individual who is minimally literate and in possession of some literary culture knows that the Iliad is full of great similes.

Contrary to what it may seem at first glance, these artful chunks of language exhibit more than the eye can see: They establish Homer’s views on war in a manner that is surreptitiously under our noses. Through a game of hiding what is in plain sight, Homer criticizes the war at the same time that he seems only to report what is happening on the battlefield.

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Put Some Heart in your Writing

August 8, 2022

Writing

guest post, Igor Livramento, literature, writing

Today’s post – “Put Some Heart in Your Writing” – is authored by Igor da Silva Livramento. He’s a fellow academic from UFSC, fellow author, fellow creative-writing advisor, and overall a great fellow. He’s also a composer, music theorist, and producer. Check out his papers on Academia.edu, his music on Bandcamp, and his personal musings on his blog – in Portuguese, Spanish/Castilian, and English. You can also find him on LinkedIn.

Despite the title, I am not talking about the organ that pumps blood through the body. It is a metaphor. I am talking about injecting blood in your text – again I commit a metaphor. It is about writing something captivating, moving, instigating. “Captivating” is another metaphor – a literary text is not a kidnapper to hold someone captive.

Although language brings these metaphors to which the metaphorical status we remain deaf (call this forgetting catachresis), do not think that writing literature is all about making clever metaphors.

heart writing — Putting some heart in your writing isn’t as simple as it might initially appear. It involves paradoxes and conflicts with much of what people (naively) call “writing”

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