PONGS AND SOEMS

This book entitled Pongs (Writings more suggestive of a song) and Soems (writings more suggestive of a poem). All in all, either of these two categories may produce a song whenever set to music. Actually, one can set just about anything to music regardless of their initial structures. One instructional objective of this work endeavors to encourage people to keep a journal of their original thoughts and ideas. A thought as in a multi-word expression can become the germ idea for a one-line word of wisdom, the first line in a four-line stanza, an idea for a children’s story, a concept for a series of booklets, the plot for a novel, and just about anything else a person could imagine. Another objective for this book may very well be as follows. Any readers of this book may already range from tyros in lyric writing, song writing, poetry to artists who have already been published. In as much as iron sharpens iron, one mind can lead to the sharpening of another with one simple, original idea. If you are already an established song writer, you might find the raw material for the next one of your songs. If you have already been published in the field of poetry at whatever level, you might find the gold nugget herein for what might become your most successful poem. The sky does not have to be your limit. A third hope of this manuscript wishes to spark a person into exploring some concepts herein provided to develop any one of them into a song. Many of these Pongs and Soems do not have music. Many may be added on to or expanded upon in order for them to be developed into a song. The realm of possibilities is without limit. Somewhat related to the foregoing paragraph, a fourth possibility is, should you incorporate the greater part of any Pong or Soem found here into a song, that would make us partners. Your music to any Pong or Soem along with more lines would take us into a collaboration on one which would become a song. Therein lies a great treasure. As you will see throughout this book, I partnered with many musicians and lyricists. Either someone set one of my Pongs to music and it became a song or I wrote lyrics to someone’s music which together would have begun like a pong and ended up as a song. Whatever else might happen, your union with either a Pong or Soem writer or an instrumentalist can become a most rewarding pastime. Within the pages of this collection you will be able to look to a fifth dimension in the availability of going on to youtube to listen to some of these Pongs or Soems which became demos. There is within the covers of this book a page dedicated to the youtube sites where some Pongs and Soems are available for listening. You can go to any one of them to appreciate how from out of an initial idea, a song can be grown out of a Pong or Soem. A sixth seed which I will plant in your psyche will be this one to follow. Though you may not ever be interested in having your Pongs or Soems become actual songs, something as great or even greater may be out there for you. My off and on yet persistent efforts saw me switching back and forth from Pong and Soem writing to writing free verse poetry. In that domain I managed to become published in numerous university and literary journals. As well, I had won the Alfred G. Bailey Award for the best poetry manuscript in 2014 through The Writers’ Federation of New Brunswick, Canada. I must warn you here. Do not let anybody deter you from your interest in writing, given that you begin to write or have already been writing. Although there might be the occasional mean-spirited editor out there, most of them try to give a hand up rather than a backhander. I personally have the greatest collection of rejection slips, many which had a morsel of encouragement to keep me going on to the next submission to whatever journal. Might I dare to include a seventh consideration for you and your newfound interest in writing as a consequence of reading this book. Consider the idea as it is coming to mind and as you are documenting it. Is it an idea of this shape or that? What I mean is that some ideas come in the form of a revelation. That is to say, after a while you can recognize some ideas as being too big for a Pong or Soem but just right for a children’s story, a short story, a newspaper article, but not too big for a novel. During one period of my life I ended up inventing children’s games whose ideas popped into my mind. Whether of not I had time to publish them is immaterial. The point, in the meantime, is that time and practice will give you eyes to recognize just what kind of idea you are birthing. So, whatever you write, whether it is hatched as a Pong or a Soem, or even before it looks like a Pong or a Soem, keep track of those things which float by in your stream of consciousness or speed across the highways of your mind. Make them pay a toll fee for using your mind but first you have to arrest them, detain them and even retrain them so that they become obedient unto you and your employment of them.