Reading Response 2: Week of 4/10/11

Steering The Craft

Chapter 10

Crowding and Leaping

The "leaping" section so reminded me of the discussion about the Buffy episode and even my impressions of "Willi," and the "crowding" section brought to mind the very first few discussions we had in class about poetry: being specific rather than using abstract words. I felt particularly challenged by the exercise to cut in half a short story I've written. I think I worked backwards from what Le Guin recommended in one of my stories, writing two very abstract scenes, then trying to fill in the gaps (small surprise that worked so poorly), and now I'm trying to re-write it entirely since the third draft was so impossibly jumbled. It's hard for me, though, because most stories come to me in random scenes that later grow into a complete story, so I find myself trying to add more often than I find myself trying to strip down. I'll have to work on that. I might try her exercise with the first short story I submitted for class, and possibly for the ghouls poem/story. I've been trying to expand the ghouls poem into a story so that it has some context, but maybe it needs to be stripped down. It will be interesting to see which direction is clearer.

Reading Response 1: Week of 4/10/11

Short Story Masterpieces

E. L. Doctorow

"Willi"

I have a love/hate relationship with this story, and once again, I found myself at odds with the rest of the class over what parts I liked and what parts I didn’t. I loved all of that poetic language, and I love how Doctorow described the sensations around the action rather than making the actions explicit. I didn't even realize the opening few pages was a single paragraph; it was a surprise in class to look back and realize it had been a huge block of text. It was such beautiful language that I was reading it straight, just basking in it, and then I got to the plot and the gorgeous mood of the opening scene seemed incongruous until I realized how it tied into the "willi" theme of the story. I was kind of hoping, though, that it was just my mind taking a detour into the gutter and that Professor Ellison was going to point out something else that would shame me. Now I can't read that opening scene without my poor mind swamped by Masturbation, in bold with a capital M. Which is sad and awesome all at once.

Anyway, I loved this story. The only things I didn't like were the gender issues and the language used to exaggerate those gender stereotypes. But I realize what else is going on here, and if the son had been less enamored with his father's grandeur, his voice wouldn't have been authentic for this time, place and character. (I have the same problem with GRRM's work, perpetually caught between love and hate.)

Reading Response 2: Week of 4/3/11

Steering the Craft

Chapter 7 – Chapter 8

Point of View and Voice

I actually read Chapter 7 back in January when I first got the books, because Point of View is something I was struggling with for my book. Re-reading it for class last week helped refresh my understanding of it and also helped me to notice (if not to perfectly correct) the times I slip out of third person limited to the involved author voice. One thing I was interested in is that she distinguished between the narrator and an observer in first person and third person limited. I never really considered the importance of categorizing whether the voice was the protagonist or someone else, but she made me think about it. It made me recall writing advice I read elsewhere, that the protagonist is the character we’re looking at (the person we’re rooting for), and the narrator is the character we’re looking from. It can be the same person or not, and I think an important thing is not to automatically limit yourself to the protagonist. Achilles is sort of the protagonist (or antagonist, with Hector the protagonist) of The Iliad, but the story is so much more interesting told from varied points of view. I don’t think I would like it at all if it had been told from either one of those characters’ points of view exclusively. It would feel too claustrophobic. On the other hand, telling “The Magic Barrel” entirely from Leo’s point of view (until that last brief scene) made the story for me, by showing me the sort of person Leo was and how he viewed the world through his prickly voice. So it really comes down to how the author uses the voices. You can still use perspective explosively, whether you spread it out or tighten it down.

I love writing so much.

As a side note: it was cool that she brought up Tolkien’s fox, because as soon as I read “involved author,” I thought of Tolkien and his unmistakable storyteller’s voice. (I also thought of Homer and other Greek writers, but then again, I suppose the oratory style of those epic poems and storytelling in general back then makes an “involved author” a given.) I tried writing once from a voice like that and it’s damn hard to do it at all, much less do it excellently and consistently. It seems like more and more of a thing of the past to have such a dominant storyteller voice in fiction, but trying it myself and reading Le Guin’s comments on it made me realize all over again just how much talent it takes.

Reading Response 1: Week of 4/3/11

Short Story Masterpieces

Bernard Malamud

“The Magic Barrel”

I didn’t have quite the same reaction as the rest of the class. One thing I was struck by—and I’m wondering if that’s why Professor Ellison had us read this particular story at the same time that we were reading about Point of View and Voice in the other book—is that the story seemed so clearly told from Leo’s narrow perspective. He projected so much onto the women and even onto Salzman. I felt that a lot of his general unhappiness and harsh view of others was born out of his feelings of lacking direction and being forced into a profession for which he had no passion, and the feelings of incompetence that came from that situation. I think part of why Stella seemed like a match made in heaven was because, well maybe she was, but more than that: he saw her as on his level, not someone (like Lily) whose competence and expectations he would have to live up to for the rest of his life, but someone who could accept him as he was and together either rise or fall or go in an entirely different direction. As for Salzman, I’m not sure if he arranged it or if he didn’t, but one thing I was sure of is that his relationship with his daughter wasn’t what his words to Leo made it appear. My take on it was that he was saying all of the things that Leo might have said months or years ago, the default reaction a rabbi might have, the reaction he’s no doubt heard plenty of times before from other clients, the general public, maybe even his wife. Perhaps that was why he and his wife felt so aloof. I was with Professor Ellison and Yeeva on the “songs for the dead” part. It felt hopeful to me, not dismissive or morbid… although I also get the feeling that chanting songs for the dead was kind of how he spent his weekends. Even that, I think, would illustrate his sympathy towards society’s “dead,” rather than viewing outcasts as lost causes. Anyway, that was my impression. (I have more thoughts on Lily but I’m sick as a dog right now and can’t concentrate, so it will have to wait for some other time.)

p.s. I wrote my initial paragraph in class from Leo’s reflection’s point of view. But I thought that might be cheating, so I change it to Lily and wasn’t satisfied with what I came up with. It felt very clichéd and silly. I liked the reflection paragraph better but scrapped it. Oops.

Reading Response 2: Week of 3/28/11

Steering the Craft

Chapter 6

Subject Pronoun and Verb

I felt so disconcerted reading this chapter. I agree with Le Guin on the passive voice, including her comment that there is a time and place for it. However, when it came to point of view and tense, it was hard not to look back on the first short story I wrote for class and how I was doing everything that she emphatically said to avoid: present tense and second person. That was the first time I'd ever written a story or anything outside of some brief bad poetry in second person, but present tense is something I find myself falling into for both poetry and prose. I don't think of it as more immediate, or past tense as more removed; I'm not trying to construct some artificial closeness with the reader. I don't even think about why I lean towards it. The best I can think of as a reason is that sometimes, I just like the rhythm and flow of words in present tense more than I do in past tense. Something about the "-ed," I guess. I realize that most of what I've written has been kept to myself, and present tense can be off-putting to many readers, as Le Guin said. I still think it has its own time and place and its own worth as a valid tense, and I can't see myself stepping away from it entirely. But I do need to keep her arguments in mind and use them to critique myself objectively, particularly for short stories. (The novel I'm working on is past tense.) As far as the person of the verb, as I think I mentioned before, I dislike first person and usually lean towards third person limited (sometimes spanning several points of view) rather than third person omniscient. I find both third person omniscient and first person too thin: the latter in scope and the former in depth.

Reading Response 1: Week of 3/28/11

Steering the Craft

Chapter 5

Adjective and Adverb

This was a fun chapter for exercises, particularly trying to use little or no adjectives and adverbs (which I tend to overuse in poetry, especially) in a descriptive paragraph. In our excercise during class, I found that one of the biggest changes from draft to draft was the verbs. I didn't consciously intend to, but I think in my trying to best illustrate this or that character or voice, I changed how they categorized the action (verb) in every sentence. It was a good lesson because I think we tend to forget verbs when we try to be descriptive, and what this taught me is that verbs can be the most dynamic descriptions of all.

Reading Response 2: Week of 3/21/11

Steering the Craft
Ursula K. Le Guin
Chapter 3: Sentence Length

I was so encouraged to read the letter of a writer of Virginia Woolf's caliber, saying, "But on the other hand here am I sitting after half the morning, crammed with ideas, and visions, and so on, and can't dislodge them, for lack of the right rhythm." Yes. Yes. Yes. Exactly. I was practically crying to hear how even someone so successful and skilled and respected has the same problems that I have. I've mentioned it before, but I simply can't write unless I hear the rhythm of the words in my head. Part of the problem is too many ideas and not enough clear direction. But even when I do have an idea, like the story I wrote about my Mom, it's so hard to get started and this is precisely the reason. It has to sound right, or I can't get it out. This wasn't Le Guin's point at all, I realize, and I appreciated the examples of sentence length and balance in the book, but honestly, what I took away from it was this big sigh of relief. "It doesn't have to end at a blank white Word document or sheet of paper, Sarah," is what I told myself. "Writers deal with this rhythm issue all the time and find ways to get past it. So get over yourself and start writing." I'm going to try to remember this whenever I'm discouraged and feel like quitting.


Chapter 4: Repetition

This chapter was enormously helpful to me and somewhat encouraging, as well. Repetition is something I find myself naturally drawn to as I write, whether it's prose or poetry, and I'm glad to see that it's not something that I necessarily have to abort to continue writing stories. What I need to do is dial back, I think, and learn when to use it and when not to, because (certainly for the story I submitted in class) the repetition is a little too overt and might not always add to the flow and content of the story. It might even detract from it, with someone thinking, "Why is she writing the same word over and over?" I have found that I do less repetition of words and phrases in my novel-writing and more of the sort of larger-scale "mountain" of repetition that she described, bringing certain themes or plotlines full circle from beginning to end. (Or, that's how it is in my head. I haven't actually written very much of the actual text of my novel so far. See above.)

Reading Response 1: Week of 3/21/11

Short Story Masterpieces

Flannery O'Connor

“A Good Man Is Hard To Find”

It feels weird to dislike something considered a masterpiece. It feels preposterous, because I’m lucky if I can string even two subpar sentences together on an otherwise blank page after days of fretting over it, so who am I to critique a great writer? I feel like that time in my senior year in high school, when my Humanities teacher put me on the spot to ask me what I thought of Jane Eyre (which we were reading in class), and I said, emphatically, “Boring.” He didn’t say anything but looked at me as if to ask, “How can you even exist?” Oh, well. I wanted to elaborate on what I mentioned in class, if only because I never explain myself well out loud and am better getting my point across when I write. (Or so I hope.)

Predictability was mentioned. My problem with the predictability wasn’t well explained in class, but it wasn’t the "suspense" factor now common in crime fiction or the plot structure itself (which was predictable thanks to the foreshadowing, but I didn’t have a problem with that, since foreshadowing well done can give the reader a sense of full circle at the end of the story). What I found predictable was the character dynamics between the grandmother and the Misfit, which is what the entire story is built on, really. If that fails, it sort of all fails. And it failed for me. She didn't do it particularly badly (aside from the melodramatics), but it's just a dynamic that I'm weary of. I couldn’t think of examples during class, but I wasn't thinking specifically of crime novels or even short stories, but all kinds of stories by all kinds of authors. Shakespeare, Hugo, Steinbeck, Dumas, all the way back to Homer, even Disney, etc. Tons of Japanese literature. Various characters (most often “heroes” and “villains”) have been directly expressing this sort of existential angst, speaking to each other to be more understanding, to be less cruel, to do this or be that or pardon this for the sake of [me/my child/my love/your wife/your unborn son/your cousin-lover-bff/etc.]. The bad man isn't truly evil, not really. He doesn't believe himself to be, doesn't want to be, feels trapped into being, etc. The good guy forgives, or is willing to. On and on. And on. But of course neither of them can really change the other, and that's seemingly rarely the point, anyway. Writers (including myself) seem to just love getting down into all that delectable existential material. So it just goes on. And on. I very rarely enjoy those kinds of scenes where two characters--no matter the circumstance but generally protagonist and antagonist--have these dueling monologues that go from angst into really self-important, this is the sum of me, religiously symbolic angst dialed up to eleven before one of them dies or kills someone the other one cares about or whatnot. To be fair, I’m lately far less patient with this particular writing tactic at (or, more pointedly, as) the climax of a story only because I used to watch Supernatural until it shredded my last nerve, and I think a good 90% of their episodes ends with one of the “heroes” and a villain jawing at each other for approximately 10 minutes, sometimes 20, and certainly from one commercial break to the next and final one. I’m just over the monologuing. I expect them in plays, but everywhere else, it has to be earned. Earned, for me, means that it’s not a character (like the Misfit) who just shows up two-thirds of the way into a relatively short story and spends the whole time making this self-important speech to another self-serving character who is doing the inverse right back at him. The grandmother earned her monologue, but the Misfit’s monologue was wholly unearned and dead on arrival for me. The fact that his scene revolved so overwhelmingly around his monologue makes the monologue the point of the climax if not the whole story, and that's where and why it truly failed for me. The fact that the grandmother’s monologue (I’m calling it “monologue” in place of “ramble”) revolved around the Misfit was just the final nail in the coffin of that scene. Too, too much. And then some.

It bothers me because A Good Man Is Hard To Find was going really well initially (after a “too many names” moment, which I'll comment on below) and I was enjoying the naturalistic and unapologetic way O’Connor wrote the dialogue and characterization. The scenes in the car were the best for me, very evocative of time and place and very clear in characterization. I was firmly in their story, whether I loved or hated or felt annoyed by them, because the story was allowing me to sort of naturally fall in step with them. It felt as opposite of put on as it gets. (As a side note: this is part of why I think Red Sammy was unnecessary. Three pages with him and his nameless wife, just to set up the Misfit, when a wanted poster observed from the window of the car or some such would have sufficed. I didn’t need the Red Sammy interlude to be more/less sympathetic to the protagonists. In addition to that, the interlude didn’t offer any new information about them, which made the interlude a criminal waste. In short stories, real estate is so important because there’s so little of it.)

To comment also on something mentioned in class, I disagree that the “you’re one of my babies” line was genuine. I felt it was the most self-serving line from the grandmother of them all, the most blatantly manipulative, and probably why the Misfit shot her, kind of like when someone says “I know just how you feel” after someone else has explained in vivid detail a horrifying event in her life. “Piss off!” is what I’d feel and probably shrug off her hand if she tried to touch me. Well, the Misfit had a gun and is a killer, so he shot instead of shrugged. That's my read on it. Maybe I’m projecting or maybe I'm too cynical, but the Misfit was just too full of granny’s bs at that point and went off. (Yay! The best part of the story, by far.) I felt that was the only genuine moment from him, and the least genuine granny moment (and O’Connor’s least effective line if meant to be genuine, even including all the religious symbolism). Really, this could just as easily be titled A Good Woman Is Hard To Find. The only cool thing about that scene to me (and this is based on me reading it differently from most of the class) is that they were both getting tighter and tighter latched onto their sense of self-preservation: the Misfit on an emotional level against the manipulation and the grandmother on a physical one against his gun/strength. Particularly the grandmother, who became so desperately focused on self-preservation that she grew less and less aware of the nonsense she was spouting and how over-the-top it was. They both made an instinctive decision in that moment, both of them bad ones, and what followed is what would follow. That was very cool.

Another problem I had (and I'm probably alone in this) was a thought that struck me at the beginning (and it was the only real problem I had with the beginning). “Too many names.” Awesome names, for sure, but just too many. Name after name after name, or, in the grandmother and children’s mother’s case, place-holders. The Misfit. Red Sammy. John Wesley. June Star. Pitty Sing. Bailey. Grandmother. Children’s mother. Baby. Too many names, too many characters, too many people to pick and choose from on who to care about and who not to, with too little "screen" time to encompass it. And some of those names were "Southern" almost to the point of caricature, which had the effect of turning the characters into cartoons. It's no wonder the grandmother wasn't the one named June Star, for instance, because that would have emphasized the already overblown nature of the climax: June Star telling the Misfit, "You're one of my own children!" It's not that I don’t think names have a place in short stories, but reading this brought back my thoughts upon reading “Popular Mechanics.” I prefer minimalism to paragraphs of expositional text and strings of character names. With names and cartoonish names and non-names thrown at me in such abundance, I didn’t know which character I was supposed to care for or if I was supposed to take this story seriously, and so I didn’t care about any of them, even at the end. (Well, I felt bad for Bailey, but only because I can’t imagine living with that madhouse, plus being killed by a crazy convict because a cat fell on his neck while he was driving pointlessly into the woods. That sucks.) Anyway, I remember something I read once in a genre writing book by Orson Scott Card (who I have mixed feelings about, but his writing advice is very useful). You have an opening scene that lasts two and a half pages between a taxi driver and the narrator/main character. The taxi driver is an obnoxious guy and leaves a strong impression as a distinct character in his own right. If this is a novel-length story, you don’t expect to ever see him again, except perhaps in passing as an aside, possibly one of the least important of the many subplots. But if this is a short story, by the importance given to his scene simply by its length, you expect him to be a major character. This is how I felt during the interlude with Red Sammy and his wife and, to a lesser extent, during the opening scene learning everyone's names, including the cat's. (The cat, by the way, was the only one I liked all the way through, and the only time I felt bad for anyone was when Bailey threw the cat against the tree or whatever it was.)

I guess my distaste for this story boils down to what we talked about in class during the poetry section and again during the Buffy episode: the hotter the content, the cooler the language. But in this story, everything was hot: the final situation itself, the content of the grandmother/Misfit conversation, and the language O’Connor used throughout the scene, dramatizing it even further. I felt like the Emperor in Amadeus, thinking “Too many notes. Just cut a few, and it will be perfect!” The Emperor couldn't answer Mozart's question, "Which few did you have in mind?" but I hope I've clarified exactly which ones bothered me, and why.

Reading Response 2: Week of 3/14/11

Steering The Craft
Ursula K. Le Guin
Ch.1: Sound of Writing


Although I didn't have the same emotional response to this chapter as I did to the second, I was still interested in the process she outlined and the examples of "gorgeous" writing she shared. One of the things I haven't been able to shake free of--to a very detrimental degree, as it directly impacts my ability to let loose and simply write--is the sound of writing. I hear what I'm typing in my head, and it has to sound a certain way, or, more specifically, to have a certain rhythm or cadence to it, or I'm unsatisfied and waste my time editing and editing to get the smallest sentence rhythms to sound correct to my ear. I guess I'm most inspired by music, externally, and need certain music playing to capture a certain mood to put me in the right frame of mind. Internally, I have this metronome in my mind's ear, clicking off, and my writing has to keep time with it or the mood gets disrupted. (Add that to my complete lack of plot and structure, and I'm completely screwed when it comes to writing fiction, although it is what I long to do well. *sigh*) All in all, this was a very beautiful, very inspiring yet very depressing chapter to read. I have no idea how to fix my problem. Le Guin's exercises and the exercises in class continue to give me Blank Page Syndrome. I am so envious of proficient writers.

Reading Response: Week of 3/14/11

Steering The Craft

Ursula K. Le Guin

Ch.2: Punctuation

I experienced an unusually charged response not to the subject matter in question but to her tangent at the end of the chapter, regarding the use of “he” or “they” when the gender of the person in question is unknown. I completely agreed with her sentiment but wished she had brought up the option of gender neutral pronouns, since it seemed like the perfect place and time for it. That our English language doesn’t allow for anything but inanimate gender neutrality has long been a serious interest of mine, because I feel as frustrated and even offended as her that in the absence of verification, the default must then be male. I feel equally frustrated that users of the English language have, by and large, taken to using grammatically incorrect pronouns to side-step the issue to the point that it is a non-issue. Because I have to respectfully disagree with her on that point: it is grammatically incorrect and certainly mathematically incorrect, to use plural and singular pronouns together. Why isn't there a gender neutral pronoun in English to use in place of the inanimate "it" and the undetermined "he/she"? Not to mention the validity of such a pronoun for people who don't fall into either of those gender categories? I don't understand why the greater debate in our country isn't what pronoun to create/use, but whether transgendered people even exist to begin with. We're constantly behind the rest of the world in matters like this, but I'm not sure on this particular point how other languages handle it. I know Japanese, with how it is structured, allows for pronouns to be implied rather than directly expressed. "広島に行きました" = "[SUBJECT] went to Hiroshima," is the same sentence whether it is a man going, a woman going or someone of unspecified gender going, or even freight cargo (an inanimate object). The subject is implied by name in the context of whatever conversation is taking place, and the rest of the conversation follows accordingly, almost entirely free of subject in most sentence structures. English is driven by noun and pronoun, though, and seems religiously married to two and only two gender categories, excluding "it." It's something that pisses me off and frustrates me and one of the major reasons why linguistic anthropology is such a huge passion of mine: why and how gender and culture and language intertwine, and to what effect.

Viewing Response: Week of 2/28/11

Since we didn't have any reading assignments this week, I thought I would post in response to the Buffy episode, "The Body." I wanted to focus more on the narrative and structural elements of the episode and how they worked for me rather than responding directly to the content of the episode itself. One of the things that stands out immediately is the use of cuts, how scenes go from one to the next. It works remarkably well as a reflection of the disjointed point of view of someone dealing with loss. There is a certain stop/start to memories, the film in our heads (so to speak), the constant sense that we could have done this or that differently and that might have been the deciding factor between keeping a loved one alive. And beyond that, just the sense of life moving on around us and being caught in this mental lockdown. Everything moves too swiftly, and too slowly, all at once. It's difficult to describe, harder to portray, but "The Body" expressed it perfectly. I thought the episode depicted this feeling most vividly and most honestly when it followed Buffy's first scenes. It was less effective for me when we saw Dawn break down on the floor, because that felt classically cinematic, a bit of unearned melodrama, whereas the very strength of the opening scenes was in the realistic stop/start breaks in Buffy's bewildered point of view. The way the breaks work between, for instance, the dinner scene and the following cut to Joyce's face reminded me of some of the great works of fiction, how the scenes have breaks between descriptive text and dialogue. In the same way, the camera angles and silent shots worked like minimalist writing, giving everything to the viewer/reader in the space around the stillness. It can seem out of place or jarring but that is the point and purpose, I think, and when the overall work is taken into context, the disjointedness becomes as much a part of the emotional glue as the dialogue and descriptions themselves. It is expressing the emotional content in ways other than words. Showing, not telling.

I think this is why I find some television shows deal with grief better than others. I've always considered "The Body" to be one of the very best, whereas the episode dealing with Fred's death (and Cordelia's, to a lesser extent) in Angel were less effective because it was telling me how they felt, rather than showing me how it felt to feel what they felt. (If that makes sense…) In another genre series, I thought Supernatural's "Everybody Loves a Clown," though convoluted by the plot of the week, dealt with grief more realistically than it did with the many deaths (and returns) later in the same season and continuing on throughout the rest of the series. (Perhaps that's the reason why it stopped being effective. Too much of a good thing dilutes it, and too much of a diluted thing makes for a lot of big fat nothing.) From a genre point of view, "The Body" works particularly well because we kept expecting something else to happen, something more, something miraculous or magical or even evil. We didn't expect anyone connected to Buffy to die a normal death. We didn't expect anyone like Buffy to have to deal with losing a loved one, not to an enemy she could fight, but simply to disease. Professor Ellison mentioned it in class, the "horror" of normal life. I think that's why Joyce's death ultimately works better as a reflection of the human experience and lingers deeper in the consciousness than the deaths of Wesley, Fred, Cordelia, John Winchester, Kara, etc. It just happened. That's all. In genre writing, there always seems to be some search for the ulterior motive or nefarious plan behind this or that hero's sidekick or lover or parent dying. If there isn't, it's almost see as a letdown. "The Body" showed that not only are bells and whistles unnecessary, but sometimes they cheapen the impact of the death itself. Buffy fighting the vampire at the end showed that up clearly for me. Fighting bad guys is not where the dramatic impact is for a character story or episode, whether it's genre or not. That's window dressing and should be delegated as such. A lot of shows and novels consistently get that wrong. It's an important lesson to keep in mind when dealing with emotionally weighty topics in writing, whether it's poetry or prose. It calls back another lesson Professor Ellison taught us, how to dial back the language in a poem when the content is immense. Spare writing, like spare directing, can be the difference between rewarding emotional investment and diluting it.

(I'll probably forget all of this the moment I try to write a short story with an actual plot. Argh, plot!)

Reading Response 2: Week of 2/21/11

Word of Mouth

Philip Booth

"Evening"

I'm consistently drawn to the sparse poems more than to the wordy poems, and this was one of my favorites so far. I think what jumps out at me the most is the impact of the line breaks. It reminds me of what was said in class, how each line should be able to stand on its own. I love that some poems are formed so that not only do the lines as written hold narrative meaning, but how they break offers an additional, isolated interpretation. Sometimes, just with the placement of the line break, two lines that create a single sentence might have three different meanings: the original sentence, then the two lines as they break. Like Booth's lines here:

Except for having to finish the postcard he's almost

written his mother, the boy is happy. Watching him

pour more ketchup onto his salad, his father

invents another new face. The boy grins.

I just adore that in too many ways. The last line has an infectious charm by itself, and in context, it has another level of humor, pathos and deeper meaning. It reminds me of what Professor Ellison said to me once after class. I had mentioned that I feel comfortable writing from a "snapshot" point of view, one moment in time, and she reminded me that we should keep the outer edges of that snapshot in mind, so that even if the picture is a still shot, the content is alive. In a nutshell, that's how these line breaks work for me. The snapshots and the living image all work beautifully, both independently and together.

Reading Response 1: Week of 2/21/11

Writing Poetry

Chapter 11: Subject

Probably the thing I seem to struggle with the most in my own poetry is being abstract. Like I mentioned in a previous post, I tend to find myself latching onto defamiliarization in an effort to keep the poetry fresh, and in doing so, I end up being too abstract even though I am using more concrete words than not. What I'm discovering is that being specific is not always only about the words you choose, but how you use those words and into what context you put those words. "Subject" helped me see how an odd subject (like Bigfoot) could be treated in an understated fashion to deliver even more impact than had it been given all the bells and whistles that naturally seem drawn to such a fanciful topic. Magical realism seems to end up delivering the magical quality of the content without sacrificing anything to defamiliarization for the sake of the odd phrasing itself. Instead, the more blasé the delivery of the fantastical, the more emphasis seems to be granted to the fantastical element itself and less (comparatively) on the poet's voice. My poem "Game" and the one about the ghouls, in particular, suffer from my habitual misread of this element. The analysis of the different Death poems, as well as the Batman poem, helped me to see how I can use symbolism in context without being either too abstract or too prosey, and, more importantly, how I can ease understatement into the phrases I use to deliver the most impact for the given fantastical subject matter. As I lean towards genre writing, not only in my poetry but primarily in my prose, this will be a particularly helpful lesson to return to from time to time.

Reading Responses: Week of 2/14/11

Writing Poetry

Chapter 9: Voice

This chapter felt like it was written to answer the biggest problem I keep having with my poetry. I think I end up too concerned with the because that I end up avoiding it to a fault, to where the meaning becomes so ambiguous that the story and voice of the poem is lost. Part of the problem might be that I'm too concerned with what we discussed very early in class: defamiliarization. Between trying to find new ways to describe familiar things and naturally more attracted to understatement than to broad expression in storytelling, I think I fell headlong into the trap of being too vague and formless. This chapter was a good illustration of why a failure of clarity has so much negative impact, as well as how to weave the meaning into the poem without spelling it out. I particularly liked the illustration of because as a set-up question in the title or premise, that the bulk of the poem itself provides an answer to, in context. I need to try to work that into my writing a little. Even something like a title can help put the poem into context.

Writing Poetry

Chapter 10: Style

The part of this chapter which most impacted me goes hand-in-hand with Chapter 9, continuing its illustration of the delicate balance of becausing. The statement (which seems like an automatic truth once it's said but I wouldn't have thought to phrase it that way initially) that irony is dialogical meant more to me than anything else in the chapter. It helps me put into concrete context the statements made in Chapter 9, that unless there is a dialogue that the reader actively participates in, at least to anticipate where the poem is going rather than to have it spelled out, the impact of the poem will be that of a monologue over the telephone rather than two voices being reactive to one another. This helps me rein in the over-the-top defamiliarization, to be reminded that the reader should be given the benefit of the doubt to be intelligent enough to get it but that I have to express the poem so that it doesn't become a private joke that gets crickets in response but that an adequate amount of information is being shared so that both participants "get" it.

Reading Response 2: Week of 2/7/11

Writing Poetry
"Subject"


This was probably the chapter that prompted the most from me, not necessarily in terms of prolific output but in thought and reconsideration of my writing process. I was struck by all three of the methods described, and feel compelled to try them. The juggling method, in particular, seemed that it might be helpful to me in providing context for some of the poetry I've already written for class. I think a lot of my poetry lacks a clear "voice" and some sense of context, which obscures the story and meaning of the poems. I need to work on that, and I think this chapter is going to help me a great deal. I tried some juggling with the breakup poem for class, and I'm not satisfied with the result, but I know I can go back and work on it again and again to get it just right. Perhaps another one of the methods will work better. The beauty of writing poetry, as they keep stressing and as I keep learning, is that nothing is a "finished product." I don't have to worry about getting it exactly right, because putting a period on it would be making it sterile and obsolete. Poems have to be dynamic and fluid. I think I'm finally getting that.

Reading Response 1: Week of 2/7/11

Word of Mouth
Russell Edson
"The Fall"


I loved each and every one of his poems so much so that I've been compelled to buy a book of his poetry. (It looks amazing!) What I love about his work (particularly "The Fall") is the simplicity of phrasing. There is so much wit and irony delivered in such an understated way, not belaboring the point he's trying to make (a trap I fall into with my prose freewrites) but delivering the punch gracefully, even affectionately. I love, also, that he's not just about the "punchline" (as Professor Ellison and I discussed on Thursday, when I asked where was the critical place to have the theme clarified: the setup at the beginning or the closure at the end). Edson's work can be read over and over with only richer enjoyment and appreciation. He's almost an understated poet version of Tim Burton's general vibe.

Reading Response 2: Week of 1/31/11

Word of Mouth
Amy Gerstler
"Modern Madonnas"


This was perhaps the flattest reaction I've had to any of the poems read for class thus far. I believe I understand what her general theme was and where she was coming from, but I'm not sure if it's the delivery or the interlocking of tragedy + crime + pop culture + kitchen sink, but it was a chore to read through it. Somewhat like Billy Joel's "We Didn't Start the Fire" without the peppy music to keep the redundant and straightforward nature of the piece from becoming redundant. I felt detached enough just reading the poem itself, but then I read the brief bio, which states: "Gerstler's postmodern prayer "Modern Madonnas" is a haunting litany of contemporary suffering." Maybe I am completely disconnected from the suffering of someone somewhere in the world, but I really don't see the "contemporary suffering" in computer-engineered tax evasion, or how it complements or enhances the "haunting" litany of said suffering to list the Gallup Poll, talk radio and glib interviewers alongside diabetic blindness, drive-by shootings, radiation sickness and chemically induced birth defects. If she's being sarcastic or ranting about how the world in general has gone to pot, okay, I was willing to take it that way, like a play on Billy Joel's anthem. But the bio turned that on its head, and some of the things she listed aren't inherently wrong to begin with, like genetic mutation, which has been a constant force in evolution since the dawn of time. (Maybe she chose her word poorly and meant genetic engineering?) I'm not sure how power lunches and after-hours clubs are something to be sad about, either. Likewise soundtracks.

Anyway, I just feel unimpressed and at a loss. I hope someone can give me a fresh perspective on it. :/

Reading Response 1: Week of 1/31/11

Word of Mouth
Naomi Shihab Nye
"My Friend's Divorce"


How I wish I could wrap this up in the perfect Japanese translation and give to my best friend. It was so simple and bare, deceptively so, that for a second, I forgot the title of the poem and began to drift away from it. But it hadn't rambled off course as I believed it had, but, instead, brought the expression of the subject matter full circle to something extraordinarily resonant. It somehow straddles hopefulness with 20-20 hindsight, which I think is a remarkable feat. It's by far one of my favorite poems thus far in Word of Mouth.

Reading Response 2: Week of 1/24/11

Writing Poetry
Form and Structure
The Q&A, pg. 29

I really enjoyed this exercise, although I am finding it hard to utilize in my own writing. Self-edit has always been my stumbling block, and without anyone else to bounce this exercise off of, I find myself thinking too much of how I should answer and not letting my imagination run free. This seems like a wonderful exercise to loosen the mind, so to speak, and let the ideas pop out and expand, but even putting myself in the mind of someone else (a character of mine, or some celebrity) is proving difficult. I would love to do this in small groups in class, maybe when we get into prose. I have a feeling, though, that self-editing will be my downfall no matter what I'm writing. I'm such a slow writer!

Reading Response 1: Week of 1/24/11

Writing Poetry
Form and Structure
Susan's Poem, pg. 42

I have to disagree with the final verdict on the sonnet version of this poem. It felt jarringly stilted in comparison to the earlier drafts and completely diminished for me the original impulse, so much so that it was as if written by someone who was watching a documentary on Susan rather than feeling her dreams from the inside out. Even the fact that it was given such an expositional title took me out of the moment before I even dipped into it. The newly structured poem stumbled into form, whereas the earlier drafts flowed naturally and, by the very lack of structured design, took me with Susan to her imagined worlds. It had a lack of self-awareness that led me to see as she saw, whereas the new form felt like receiving an engraved invitation to a sleepover party. When we discussed the issue of form in class, and David brought up the point of how it challenges the poet to use phrases that he or she might not otherwise have played with, I felt in agreement with him but viewed this particular experiment with Susan’s poem as one such attempt where the poet failed the challenge. I’m a little disconcerted to find the sonnet structure of Susan’s poem labeled “enhanced” by the text, with particular attention given to the “chatting at work” (one of the changes I disliked the most), but I suppose these are the areas in which it’s clear that the impact of poetry is nothing if not subjective. I wonder how I would have responded to it had I not seen the editing process at work. I doubt I would have been moved by Susan’s poem in sonnet-form, but I don’t think I would have wanted to see it in unstructured form, either. I think I probably would have just passed it by as a poem that didn’t do much for me one way or another, which would have been a shame. I love how evocative of childhood dreams this poem is.