Kurtis Lamkin is a poet from Philadelphia who composes and performs praise poems on the Kora, a beautiful 21-string West African harp/lute. He tours the United States performing at festivals, community centers, prisons and universities, and has several albums to his credit including Love Life, El Shabazz, and Queen of Carolina. In the past he has served as the Bourne Poetry Chair at Georgia Tech, and as Poet in Residence at The New School for Social Research.
True Sound: 9 circle games
True Sound
a collection of circle games for making poems by heart
Contents
Sound Fountain
Telephone
My Room
Can you fly as high as I?
My soul is
The woman leads into the mist
Telescope
Say It
The Sound Of Green
Sound Fountain
What a wonderful thing it is to live and to learn! Let’s gather around in a circle and learn how to make a fountain of sound together.
First, everybody stand with feet firmly on the floor. Relax the knees and breathe deeply as if we are drinking air into our bodies. And then let it flow smoothly back into the world.
Now, take another deep breath into the belly. Make the sound “O” from as low as we can. Let it rumble. Slowly make that O louder and higher in pitch. When it is as loud and as high as we can make it, shout it all the way out, as if spraying it into the sky.
Hold it out there for a moment.
oooooooOOOOOOOOOOOooooooo.
Then slowly bring the O down softer and lower in pitch. In the new silence, rest.
Feel the flush of release in the belly, feel the soft tingling in the head. Did we made a mess? Of course. Did the fountain sound more like a storm than a symphony? Good. Let’s make another mess. Relax and breathe and make a fresh, new, mighty O!
Telephone
Let’s sit in a circle now and play the game called Telephone.
I whisper a word into the ear of the person on my left. That person whispers the same word in the ear of the person on their left. That person does the same thing until the word goes around the circle and comes back to me.
To see if we all got the same word, I say out loud the word I received. The person to my right says aloud the word they received, and each person to the right does the same thing until it comes back to me.
If the word I sent is the word I received - and nothing changed in between - we can do another round with a new word. And if the new word is the same , let’s whisper a longer phrase around the circle. Challenge our listening and memory.
The question is: suppose the word changes during the whisper? Suppose it gets smushed, dressed up, added to or edited? Anything can happen to our poor little word as it passes from person to person. And that is the fun of the telephone game.
We as individuals may become a little salty when we find out where in the circle the word changed, but the beauty of the game is that it makes us - as a team - better with each round. We listen better, we remember better and maybe best of all we whisper better.
Look at us cupping our neighbor’s ear so our word goes right into their mind. We deliver it with more and more care and realize the miracle of a word: this tiny sound-thing that comes out of the imagination that is in our body, goes through the air, into the ear of someone else, and then into the imagination that they have in their body.
It's a miracle, the word.
My Room
Such a beautiful day. Let’s sit outside in a circle.
Now close your eyes and imagine that we can travel back home to the bedroom where we usually sleep. Pick out one thing in that room. I pick “chair.”
Chair
Now we go around the circle and say that one thing out loud, each person taking turns to say the one thing twice.
Let’s close our eyes again and focus on the one thing from our room. Something we can see, hear, smell, taste, touch. Think of that thing as a character - with purpose and history and presence. Use one word to describe that character.
Wooden chair
Going around again and saying this phrase twice, let’s see if we can build on and remember each other’s character so that the last person in the circle recites everyone’s described character.
Each of us now can break out of the circle to find our own special space where we can imagine ourselves back in our bedroom. Pick out three other things and describe each one. The key is to be able to recite the list of described things word for word. Twice.
Wooden chair
straw hat
indigo lamp
white desk
It’s helpful to order the described characters as they appear in your room. So my list as I walk around my room from right to left would be:
Wooden chair
white desk
indigo lamp
straw hat
Choose a partner. Teach your partner your list. Let your partner teach you their list. Then let your partner recite your list of described characters to our circle. Twice. Remember that you have lived in your room for a long time and your partner is visiting it for the first time today. Have patience.
Can you fly as hi as I?
The focus for Can you fly as hi as I? is action. The framework goes like this:
(call) Can you run it?
(response) (I can run it)
(call) Can you run it?
(response) I can run it
(call) Really run it?
(response) I can run it
(All) Can you fly as hi as I?
The first person points to someone in the circle and ask the question. That person responds. After the third response the whole circle says “Can you fly as hi as I?” Then the responder points to another person in the circle so that they can do a new action:
Can you burn it?
I can burn it
Can you burn it?
I can burn it
Really burn it?
I can burn it
( All) Can you fly as hi as I?
That responder chooses another person, and we go around the circle until everybody gets a chance to call and to respond.
In the beginning let’s keep it simple by using one-syllable action words. As we go, we can add more complicated action words, moving from run and burn and dream, to treasure and inflame and dethrone, to excoriate and investigate and, well, complicate.
My soul is
For My soul is, let’s break out of the circle and find our own personal space.
First make one line: My soul is…. Add to the line a thing - a character with purpose, habit and presence to be a symbol for how you feel inside today. I picked “moonlight.”
My soul is the moonlight…
Next, make three lines that begin with the word “it” and portray some kind of action related to the character. And repeat the first line at the end:
My soul is the moonlight
It bounces off the water in the pool
It waves through my window blinds
It calms the shadows in my room
My soul is the moonlight…
Now remove the framework of “My soul is…” and the “it’s” and the repetion of the first line. Play with the phrases that remain.
The moonlight
bounces off the water in the pool
waves through my window blinds
calms the shadows in my room…
Remember that the thing - the character that represents the feeling - comes from what we can see, hear, smell, taste and touch. There are millions of things in the world around us. And millions of actions in that world. And we have millions of feelings inside of us - some named, some unnamed and some mixed up together to make new feelings.
Play with the words until it can be repeated twice in order. Long enough to be vivid but short enough to be recited by heart. Then come teach it to the circle so you can hear how it sounds when we recite it.
The woman leads into the mist
Circle up!
Let me recite for you a poem by Kobayashi Issa, the great Japanese poet. I say it twice and then the group recites it twice, word for word.
the woman
leads into the mist
low-tide beach
the woman
leads into the mist
low-tide beach
Some catch the whole poem word-for-word right away. Some are lip-synching like they are trying to keep up with the choir. No hurries, no worries. Let’s recite it again together.
Now we break up into singles. Let’s recite the poem softly to ourselves. So far, what sense or feeling does it create? Which word - one emotion - best describes the feeling for you.
Recite the poem again. It has three characters, one action word and zero statements of feeling. Dream a little about the characters. What could the woman be wearing, what is her posture…. The beach, is it wide or narrow, slick, tucked between two rows of jagged rock…. And the mist, how heavy is it, or is it cold and light….
Next, the one action word: leads. How does that word affect the woman’s relationship to the mist or to the beach? Is she coming or going? Play with the scene, let your imagination perk up all of your senses.
After imagining and conjuring up a scene based on the few words of this poem, does the one word you first used to describe its feeling still apply? Yes, there are millions of words of feeling, but now which one gives the best sense of the scene. Let’s gather together again. One by one, let’s recite Kobayashi’s poem twice and tell each other our one-word emotion for the scene.
Telescope
The poet Janine Pommy-Vega has a technique for making poems called Telescope: Name a place. Then name a character in that place. And then name a thing that the character is holding or otherwise engaged with.
Describe all three parts. And a add an action as a cherry on top:
Skagit River bank
a long gnarly limb
two eagles
watching
Or:
The old candle factory
hot fat vats
all the burly men
melting
Or:
Quiet chapel
red velvet altar
shiny coins
dropping
We can stay in the circle to compose these little telescopes, or find a personal space. When we have played with this technique for a while, make up one and bring it back to the group - of course long enough to be vivid and short enough to recite word for word.
Let’s go around the circle. The first person recites theirs. We all recite it together. That person picks the next person. We all recite it together. When everybody has a chance to recite one, let’s consider all the different scenes that we have composed, places we have traveled via each other's words.
Say It
Just as there are an infinite number of things outside of our skin, there are an infinite number of emotions inside. We know we can make scenes with our words to portray emotion. Now let’s step into the scene and boldly say what we feel.
Here’s a scene:
Red camellias open
teenage moon
not quite full yet overflowing
Here’s the scene in which I boldly and unapologetically step into and openly declare Emotion:
Red camellias open
teenage moon
not quite full yet overflowing
Enter I
with a basket of comforts
Let’s play the circle game where one person creates a scene with three characters and one action, and the next person steps into the scene with a declared emotion. That person creates a scene and the next person reponds. And we go round and round, higher and higher.
In this way we can do together what we usually do alone: dream. We can dream together and play in the different scenes of the dream that is blossoming in our circle.
The Sound Of Green
The sound of green is water
trickle green
is the word after the rain
bathed and beautiful again.
This poem was written by a fourth grader many years ago named David Perez from Brooklyn, New York. The sense of the poem is nicely carried in the way he blends seeing and hearing together. But let’s explore the sounds of the poem, the way the words feel on our tongue and lips, and how they sound out loud.
First, step away from our circle and recite the poem word for word a few times.
The sound of green
is water
trickle green
is the word
after the rain
bathed
and beautiful
again
Next, recite it slowly with long sounds and exaggerated silences. Play with your voice: whisper, sing, pirouette, growl, cha-cha through the words and the silences.
The
sound of
grrrrreen
is water trickle
greeeeeen
is
the
word after
the
rain
bathed
and beautiful
again
Sing the poem. Sweet Honey In The Rock sing a Langston Hughes poem. Bob Marley sings a Marcus Garvey speech. Anything that can be said can be sung - even the daily news. Settle on a way to deliver the poem that is long enough to be virtuoso but short enough to be sung note for note twice. It may be just one pitch or one beat different than just saying it, or it may be as fancy as you please.
Come back to the circle and deliver the poem to us. Remember that the words and their order remain the same. The only thing new is the way you sing them out. Show us how you sing The Sound Of Green so that we can all sing it back to you.
Golden Season
I shoulder my son over dead stalks,
feel him up there rocking
a captain taller than we'll ever be alone.
He trips cornrows like a one-man kindergarten
scattering south toward woods
senile in far haze, yelping like a harmonica
in search of a bootdance.
If I could teach I would tell him:
men are longitude, women latitude
but wherever you stand is the top of the world.
What else can you tell a boy
who likes flying, sparrows, tumbling and being amazed?
You know he's not a herd pof palominos
but he thinks he's free.
The jinjin
What is a jinjin?
The jinjin is a 19 string descendant of the kora. It is made of cedar with an ebony bridge, played with six fingers, and the strings are on the back of it as well as the front. It is the instrument that accompanies the poems and songs of "Love Life."