I’m helping Borun revise an imagist poem for his seventh grade poetry project. Together, we ponder how to show and not tell.
Me: So what’s going on here?
Borun: I’m a bird flying in the jungle.
Me: Okay, so this is looking better. But can you think of another way of writing that you flew in the direction of the sun? Another thing to call the sun or a way to describe it?
Borun: Uh…
Me: Like in “All Summer in a Day,” Ray Bradbury says it’s a coin and a lemon.
Borun: Hmmm… What about “the golden ball of gas”?
Me: I dunno. Sounds like a fart.
Borun eventually decides on “the golden orb.”
I don’t know, the golden ball of gas sounds kind of ethereal to me.