8 posts tagged “writing”

April has been declared National Poetry Month by poets.org, and a week into the month Chris Lott described how he planned to write a poem each day in line with NaPoWriMo.  The name NaPoWriMo is lamely appropriated from NaNoWriMo, the generally obnoxious National Novel Writing Month wherein artistic conflates attempt to burn through writing a novel in 30 days.  While the energy of  NaNoWriMo inspires me in the same way the discipline and fervor of Ray Bradbury's practice does, the idea of an organized, collectively proceeding writing effort frustrated and annoyed me, particularly since it clearly valued quantity over quality.  It certainly favored people who had no jobs (a surprisingly large crowd, by the way).  Add to that the vocal dominance of NaNoWriMo participants who are either self-aggrandizing or self-degrading, and I knew this was not an activitiy to me.

But Chris Lott's engagement in NaPoWriMo intriguiged me; a poem-per-day struck me as do-able, and Chris's very practical list of self-imposed "rules" demonstrated that he, at least, wasn't afraid to do his own thing, independently.   The idea of joining him in this effort also provoked some vague feelings of comeradery, so I chose to do the same though I rejected the name NaPoWriMo and simply called my efforts "poem-per-day".  My hope was that I would stick to the schedule and thus forcibly return myself to writing poetry, a pasttime that I've sorely neglected in the last 6 years.   The goal of writing one poem per day would be rigorous, but not so difficult as to negate the quality of the poems I was working on.  I soon realized that quality could be a priority, but in the confines of whatever hour or two I had each day to put a poem together, it was impossible to make each poem "good".

Though I can't speak to the quality of my output during April, I did hit quite close to the mark in terms of quantity: from April 6th through April 30th I wrote 26 poems, and posted these on my web site, What I Assume.  I wrote nearly every morning before work, and spent a few evenings catching up.  On several days what I wrote were more poetic exercises than full-fledged poems.  A couple of the poems I thought were good at the time of writing, and I know most of the poems had at least one good line, but I think only in retrospect, some months later, will I be able to look back with any sort of objectivity.

Another interesting phenomenon had to do with my choice of subjects.  I began with a string of fairly gloomy, stereotypical subjects for a poetaster, but soon found myself terribly bored and in fact embarrassed with the uniformity.  So I urged myself to change subjects, mash-up exclusive ideas, and write on things I really wasn't comfortable writing on.

To add to the excitement of writing a poem-per-day, in the first week I also threw down the gauntlet and challenged Chris to write a villanelle sometime during the weekend.  We both did, then he reciprocated my challenge with the torturous ghazal.  I returned the final weekend with the deceptively simple-looking bref double. These excursions into poetic forms was both frustrating and delighting; I've always loved poetic forms, and in college fancied myself apt at writing formal poetry.  But either I oversupposed my abilities back then, or I've lost quite a bit of of ability since then.  What fascinated me in writing these forms is despite their apparent artificiality, their formal elements help, or rather, force the author to carry through certain themes, ideas, images, or resonances.  And while I've often thought that formal meter and rhythm risked neglecting meaning or intent, I found the limitations--particularly in length of lines and stanzas--directed me to focus on my meaning and intention more precisely, and with less waste. 

At least that was my perception during the writing; what the final outcome is, I'm too timid to suppose right now.  But this very strong and impactful month is an experience that I intend to repeat--not next year, probably not the year after, but not too far in the future.  It is a precious, exhausting experience that was worth every ounce of extra effort, but that I do not want to normalize by making it an annual tradition. But some year, some day, I will sit down again and decide, "Poem-per-day, for the next thirty days."

Every story, every poem, is toxic ectoplasm I Must Expel...

Ectoplasm

...even if in the end it's deemed fakerey, insubstantial, or only true for the medium.
 

I've been resisting posting up anything on vox to friends, family, neighbors, let alone public for the last few weeks primarily because I've debating if there is really any significant value in posting any writings or reflections on a public blog at all. This is despite the fact that I have had a lot to post in line with my original objectives in keeping this vox account, and that is to document or publish a journal-like account of my writing efforts, and to "show off" an occasional work-in-progress.  In the last month I've significantly revamped my objectives in an effort to rejuvenate my interest in the novel, and though I halted work on it in favor of finishing a short story that I just had to get out (thanks to a handful of characters and events at the ITC conference in Florida last week), I plan to resume the chore of finishing it once I've worked through a 2nd draft of the short story.  I've also written two-and-a-half poems.

In writing this short story and the poems, however, I've had to face-off against the problem of the appearance of biographical elements in fiction.   I'm still personally taken aback at how much Fear of Truth and Fear of Being Mistaken for Truth is a detriment or obstacle to my writing fiction. Anything any writer produces is bound to bear some resemblance to one or more aspects of his/her own life, often in the form of a character.  Writers may choose to indulge or resist this in different situations to move the story along.  However, engaging in mimicry of this sort becomes perilous when close friends or family read one's work, as they may make assumptions about themselves or the writer based on characters or events in the story.  Often these reactions are not unfounded for the autobiographical elements suggested above.  But I've found as often as not that readers make assumptions about the auto/biographical nature of one's writing regardless of it's actual resemblance to reality.  I think of this phenomenon as akin to the psychic who through vapid generalizations is able to convince people that s/he truly "knows" them.  Listeners/readers hear what they want to hear, they "read into" the text, overlaying their own experiences and understanding of the world, and, to some extent, interpreting this slippery thing called language according to their personal motives and persuasions.

I have seen that for a writer, truth presented as fiction is likely to cause self-incrimination. And yet even fiction presented as fiction may be perceived by readers as merely truth presented as fiction.  This is complicated by the fact that most writers understand early on: fiction sans truth is soulless.  So I must assume that this a common writers' dilemma.

The complexity in such a conflict, if the conflict is real and on-going, would give rationale for the recurring appearance (stereotype?) of "writer as loner".  While I myself am naturally a loner, I will state that this fear of social uproar over perceived reflections of reality in my writing (either themselves or myself) does indeed push me away from them; I do not share anything I write with any family members, and nearly as few friends.  Total strangers are the best testing ground, providing both objectivity and social distance.

"In this corner, weighing in at 128 pounds with his glasses, wearing black trunks (of course), the Challenger: Literary Aspirant!

"He'll be facing off against the reigning champ-een. Here he is, weighing in at a massive 300 kilonewtons, and wearing only a tan trench-coat, the indomitable Mortal Fatigue!"

Barney Ross

This is my first revision of the first poem of 2008. It has gained a title (the parentheses added at the last minute).  It has gained an ending (though I fear it may be too simplistic).  It has gained a more rhythmic patter of line spacing (line spacing flow consciously inspired by Donald Hall's very natural style). 

Exempting Everything (For Ever and Ever)


What can a soul see in a black hole?
To that's where we're all spinning
Wrapped up in the gravity of the situation

The inevitable "To Be..." of this event horizon

Round it churns like some galaxy 
Flushing dust and chaos 
Down with you and me

But dizzy we're not
None of us
numb-brained as we freeze
All of Us

Tugged further from the sun

Oceans of intelligence turn to orbs of ice, 
All the seeds we've thrown and sown
Tamed as they grow, densening to mere debris

the ever-increasing clutter

Our only hope is in the hole
And towards it we invertebly sputter
About it we only can stutter

  A stream of light?
  A spat of disorganized matter?
  Evaporate in a singularity?
  Reborn through divine charity?

Or Alpha 
the Above, 
as my father and his science said,

  Stretched, compressed, singularized, 
  Expunged, expelled, reorganized

That must be the worst lie I've learned

The omnipresent torment I've earned
For seeing the other side of the black hole

Gazing straight through the Rent Veil: the whole

World As We Know It emptying
Prince Hamlet's dreams cemented
Our ignorance exempting
Physics and philosophy equally contempted

The Inevitable Tomorrow impending
Death Himself suicidally tempted
Both God and Man repenting
And Life Itself resented

For seeing the other side sees nothing
Feeling nothing
Voided in the voidless something

Rounded up and corralled in
the diaphanous Om 

of Amen.

Room

Cream swims through coffee;
Black bitterness queers
the sequins of fat.

Haiku's are fun. Haiku's are zen.  Therefore, I try not to think about them too much upon completion, but I must admit the egotistical part of me is fantasizing that my mundane use of the verb queer causes a row amongst future students of literary criticism. You can parse the many assumptions in that statement.

What began as two lines for a longer poem that I never was able to finish have become two lines of a short poem.  Is doing so a "cop-out"? Or a service to prospective readers?  I prefer to label this edit the latter, if only because it increases attention to the first line, which (as an alternative to "I wish I had spent more time at the office...") could acceptably constitute my Dying Words:

Riddle


I'm the tangled rope you wish to cut,

The minotaur's snort in the morning;

    Without trying, just by 
    Being I untwine
    the labyrinth of sleep.

No where near refined or publicly readable, I post this to remind myself how the year started, and how I need to hack, chip and sculpt continuously if I'm going to succeed.

What can a soul see in a black hole?
To that's where we're all spinning
Wrapped up in the gravity of the situation
The inevitable "To Be..." of this event horizon
Round it churns like some galaxy 
Flushing dust and chaos down with you and me

But dizzy we're not
None of us
Our brains grow numb
As we're pulled further from the sun
Oceans of intelligence 
Turned into orbs of ice
/Watching all the other formulated formalators/
Densen their debris
And all the seeds we sow grow
Into ever increasing clutter

A soul's only hope is in the hole
And towards it we invertebly sputter
About it we only can stutter
  A stream of light?
  A spat of disorganized matter?
  Evaporate in a singularity?
  Reborn through divine charity?
Or all of the above, as my father said,
  Stretched, compressed, singularized, 
  Expunged, expelled, reorganized?

That must be the worst lie I've learned
The omnipresent torment I've earned
For seeing the other side of the black hole
Gazing st through the rent veil: the whole
World As We Know It emptying
Prince Hamlet's dreams cemented
Our ignorance exempting
Physics and philosophy equally contempted
The Inevitable Tomorrow impending
Death Himself suicidally tempted
Both God and Man repenting
And Life Itself resented

For seeing the other side sees nothing
Feeling nothing
Voided in the voidless something