Colors (Panasonic Lumix ZS200) By Sage Millen, 13 (Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada), published in Stone Soup April 2022 A note from Caleb Good morning and happy Saturday! The last time I wrote the newsletter I led off by mentioning California’s need for April showers—well, the rain has started to fall, albeit in short bursts, and with it has come an abundance of flowers. (It’s not yet May, but the old adage can’t always be spot on.) In Santa Cruz, it is even scheduled to be raining right now, as this newsletter is being sent off, at 9 AM! And, scheduled for exactly a week from right now, at 9 AM Pacific, is our first Writing Workshop of the spring session—William Rubel’s—to be followed by Conner Bassett’s at 11 AM Pacific. You can sign up for both of these classes, as well as Book Club with Maya Mahony, using the blue button, below. I also spent my last newsletter giving rapturous praise to a poem from the April issue: “Roo’s Song” by Sevi Ann Stahl. This week, I turn my attention to another poem from the April issue—”Chocolate” by Autumn E. Weinreich—which, while substantially shorter, is no less brilliant than the former. The truth is that little can be said about “Chocolate” without detracting from the art itself—one simply has to read its four lines and let the absurdity wash over them like a mid-April rain. But I will say that in writing “Chocolate,” Autumn, just six years old, has perfectly encapsulated the creative and poetic potential of the youthful mind. Her poem reminds me of something my colleague, Conner Bassett, once said in a workshop on writing nonsense: “The purpose of art is not to make sense, but to excite the senses.” Conner’s words also ring true for Sage Millen’s photograph Colors. When viewing Colors, a logical mind might ask such questions as Why is the subject lying on newspapers? or Why are they upside-down? or Why is their hand on their face? or, perhaps most importantly, Why is their hand painted in colorful splotches? Of course, none of the questions surrounding these seemingly nonsensical elements matter for the simple reason that Sage has combined them to create art that, as Conner said, “excites the senses.” For this weekend project, I’d like you to try and eliminate all urges to make sense and instead wield the primeval, preternatural power of nonsense in the creation of art. Forget purpose. Forget logic. Create for the mere sake of creation! Bask in your freedom from the restraints of reason! Excite the senses! As always, if you like what you have made and would like to share it, please submit it to us via the pink button, below. Flying green ostriches, Congratulations to our most recent Flash Contest winners! Our April Flash Contest was based on Prompt #198 (provided by intern Sim Ling Thee), which challenged participants to write a story in which the protagonist failed at everything and ultimately didn’t succeed in the end. Unsurprisingly, this subverting prompt led to some the most inspired writing we’ve seen yet! Submissions ranged from a violin recital from the perspective of a snooty child to an unreliable narrator’s laundry list of past failures to an old woman’s battle with growing tomatoes. In one story, the unlikeable protagonist even smeared butter on their nemesis’ lawn! As always, thank you to all who submitted, and please submit again next month! Congratulations to our Winners and Honorable Mentions, listed below. You can read the winning entries for this contest (and previous ones), here. Winners “Curses!” by Lui Lung, 12 (Danville, CA) “Beatrice” by Olivia Owens, 13 (Jacksonville, FL) “A Failing Success” by Emily Tang, 13 (Winterville, NC) “Cypress Woman” by Ellis Yang, 12 (Los Altos, CA) “You Win Some, You Lose Some” by Savarna Yang, 13 (Outram, New Zealand) Honorable Mentions “Dangly Necklaces” by Victoria Gong, 10 (Scarsdale, NY) “Learning to Fly” by Marin Hamory, 10 (Wellesley, MA) “The Last Leaf” by Kimberly Hu, 9 (Lake Oswego, OR) “The Performance” by Elizabeth Sabaev, 11 (Forest Hills, NY) “Gray” by Alex Zigoneanu, 11 (Portland, OR) From Stone Soup April 2022 Chocolate By Autumn E. Weinreich, 6 (Wilmette, IL) Oh, I got a new snail. Wait! Wait! He is dead. To read more from the April issue, including another one of Autumn’s poems, click here! Stone Soup is published by Children’s Art Foundation-Stone Soup Inc., a 501(c)(3) educational nonprofit organization registered in the United States of America, EIN: 23-7317498. Stone Soup’s advisors: Abby Austin, Mike Axelrod, Annabelle Baird, Jem Burch, Evelyn Chen, Juliet Fraser, Zoe Hall, Montanna Harling, Alicia & Joe Havilland, Lara Katz, Rebecca Kilroy, Christine Leishman, Julie Minnis, Jessica Opolko, Tara Prakash, Denise Prata, Logan Roberts, Emily Tarco, Rebecca Ramos Velasquez, Susan Wilky.
Nonsense
How Stories Work—Writing Workshop #16: Nonsense
An update from our sixteenth Writing Workshop with Conner Bassett A summary of the workshop held on Saturday October 9, plus some of the output published below The purpose of art is not to make sense, but to excite the senses. In an attempt to “liberate ourselves from the demands of semantic coherence,” this week we focused on “nonsense,” allowing ourselves to engage with a more automatic, silly, and playful type of thinking. We began with a poem written by a first grader Conner once taught that went “a poem is/ made by/ a snowman.” Incredible, strange, scintillating. We then took a look at a few of Marcel Duchamp’s strange sculptural artworks—the urinal, the bike wheel on a stool—as examples of nonsense. Another example of visual art, and one of our most common points of reference, were a series of paintings by Magritte, all of which made us feel as though we didn’t need to understand them, we merely needed to experience them. Next, we moved into literary examples, beginning with “Your Car is Thar” (ungrammatical) by Charles Bernstein and two poems by Edward Lear—”There was an Old Man on the Border” & “There was an Old Man with a Beard,” both of which were grammatically correct, but literally nonsensical. Then, we looked at two examples of nonsense by Russian poets: one untitled poem by Vladimir Khlebnikov, whose playful nonsense was similar to Bernstein’s “Your Car is Thar,” and “An Encounter” by Daniil Kharms, whose dry, matter of fact nonsense made us all laugh. To finish the workshop, we listened to Benedict Cumberbatch’s reading of “The Jabberwocky” by Lewis Carroll, perhaps the most famous example of nonsense in literature. The Challenge: Two Prompts: Prompt one: In five minutes, write the worst possible poem you can think of. Prompt two: Simply, write a nonsense poem or story. If you get stuck, just start rhyming nonsense like in Lewis Carrol’s “The Jabberwocky”. The Participants: Audrey, Clara, Simran, Josh, Emma, Lina, Nova, Penny, Ethan, Shilla, Ellie, Olivia, Svitra, Sinan Svitra Rajkumar, 13(Fremont, CA) Terracotta Svitra Rajkumar, 13 Terra flipped through the pages of her English textbook, reading bits and pieces, but her mind was elsewhere. She was busy thinking about the meeting she would have to host later in the evening. Her little sister’s friend was having a birthday party tomorrow and she had agreed to do face painting for the kids, but now she wishes she didn’t. She leaned back on the couch and yawned. Her other friends were going to the Ghirardelli Chocolate Factory in San Francisco tomorrow, and she couldn’t come because of some stupid party for seven year olds. Maybe there was a way she could sneak into their car and go without her parents knowing. Her Mom had recently been diving deeper into her old hobby, pottery, so she would be busy. When she was pregnant with Terra, she was obsessed with pottery and sculpting, which is why she named her daughter Terracotta. Ugh I can’t believe I was named after a type of clay Terra shut her English book and decided to get something to eat away her pain. Maybe she was being a tiny bit dramatic. She opened up the fridge and grabbed some instant noodles that she decided would be her dinner. As usual her Mom was still at the nearby art studio working on a new plate set so she would be home late. This gave Terra a large amount of time to plan for tomorrow. She began to heat up some water and had an idea.
