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- From: sstover@sumax.seattleu.edu ( Wilde Dame)
- Newsgroups: rec.arts.poems
- Subject: Re: Pity on Paradox
- Date: 2 Jan 1993 21:32:36 -0800
- Organization: Seattle University
- Lines: 124
- Message-ID: <1i5tpkINN646@sumax.seattleu.edu>
- References: <1993Jan2.223742.12198@dartvax.dartmouth.edu>
- NNTP-Posting-Host: sumax.seattleu.edu
-
- In article <1993Jan2.223742.12198@dartvax.dartmouth.edu> Andrew.W.J.Toler@dartmouth.edu (Andrew W.J. Toler) writes:
- >You don't have to read this one as slowly :)
- >
- >Hope you enjoy it and post some replies/sarcasm/stern rebukes
- >to get me to write better...
- >
- >
- >
- >Pity on Paradox
- >
- >
- The anathema of creative writing teachers the world over: "Show, don't
- tell." The fact that you use metaphor or simile does not excuse you from
- this maxim.
-
- Part of showing-don't-telling is the avoidance of being verbs. Although
- "there are" has a nice ring to it as a beginning of each stanza, it is a
- flat phrase. It thuds. The opening line, especially repeated, should
- lead the reader farther, rather than sitting back on its haunches and
- waiting for encouragement to go on.
-
- >There are sweet fields of grass made savory with tears,
- >Wildflowers sown and growing on confused hearts.
- >There is but pain over every hill and in every gully,
- >And there are living feelings breezing on every slope.
-
- Without addressing the content/subject/intent of the poem, it's possible
- to illustrate the SDT principle with your first stanza:
-
- Fields of grass turn savory with tears;
- Wildflowers, sown there, grow on confused hearts.
- Over every hill, in every gully, pain
- and living feelings breeze on every slope.
-
- As it is here, your poem and I have very little to talk about. We have no
- common ground, and nothing has happened. I am looking at a single frame,
- but its story is not included in the glimpse. Something has to happen to
- make it interesting. My immediate reactions/questions:
-
- Why do the tears sweeten the grass (where are the fields? who made you
- cry?) why do wildflowers grow on confused hearts (is this bad? why are the
- hearts confused? Why are there several hearts instead of one?) Where is
- this place, is the aliveness of feeling and pain unique to this place, why
- is it like that, how did you get here?
-
- I have trouble with the metaphors "wildflowers growing on confused hearts"
- and "living feelings breezing." Neither of them is structurally sound, I
- can't picture it, I don't know what it means.
-
- >There are places inside which cry, and places which smile,
- >Faces in shells of loneliness, tumbling around trapped,
- >Pierces through shadows on white cracked peeling walls
- >Pity on paradox, black blood spilled by pumps of loss.
-
- You need to ask yourself, in this stanza, who your audience is. Do you
- write for other people as well as yourself? If you answer yes, read on.
- If you answer no, hit 'n' and pretend I posted this.
-
- As a reader, I am aware on some level of all you are saying in your first
- line. To relate to you, the writer, I need to see or feel some common
- ground of *experience* in order to think you have any claim to these
- statements. Your tense shift (from past to present) in the third line
- confuses me and I don't understand who is acting or what is going on.
- Rather than providing me with the raw metaphor, give me the event and let
- me discover the metaphor hidden in your narrative, or at least in your
- description. The last two lines are only words to me. They evoke no
- feeling, though I am sure they are supposed to.
-
- >There are waves of passion and then they are gone,
- >Alone at last, got that one good, then there is sour.
- >Start again sure to go but what when it doesnUt?
- >Pain is surely everywhere, respite a distant trifle.
-
- This is very nearly a clinical (technical, cold, removed) description of
- the 2-a.m. I'll get along without him/her and I'm just fucking fine and
- don't touch me or I might start bawling again syndrome. It's so clinical
- it doesn't capture me at all except to make me think of what this stanza
- is really trying to be/say.
-
- >There are fields of grass made bitter with salty tears,
- ^^^^^^^^^ ||||
- >Wildflowers trying but dying on confused hearts.
- |||||| |||||
- >There is pain over every head and in every skull,
- ^^^^^^^^^
- >And there are lost feelings breezing through every soul.
- ^^^^^^^^^ ||||||||
-
- ^^^'s mark the being-verb phrases. You don't need any of 'em, they slow
- you down. |||'s mark the action-verb phrases. You need more of 'em--
- they'll make the whole thing move along.
-
- I hesitate to do this by example (contrast: Marek), because I don't want
- to influence your style with my own. I don't want to give you lines to
- use, I want you to see what *technically* can be better about your writing.
-
- Finally, I must address cliches. I don't want to see them. They can ruin
- the most fabulous poem in one small dead line. Here is my challenge to
- you: I believe you can write this poem, making the point you want to, and
- not using *anywhere* the following words:
-
- -> wildflowers
- -> hearts
- -> feelings
- -> confused
- -> lost
- -> cry
- -> smile
- -> loneliness
- and the phrase "black blood spilled by pumps of loss", first off because
- I just feel that the phrase really needs to go, and secondly because it is
- another unsound metaphor. Pumps don't spill, they propel. And what are
- "pumps of loss"? No, I don't think it works. I think you can do better.
- So, go to!
-
- >
- >PAndrew
-
- ciao...
-
- --
- Sheryl Stover % If you ask me what I have come to do in the world,
- & Hemingway & Clio % I who am an artist, I will reply: "I am here to
- sstover@seattleu.edu % live aloud." -Emile Zola
-