Incendiary Lit

Another Argument About the Impossible
by Lawrence Raab

Even if we agree in principle that a poem can be
about anything, you still want to claim
it cannot include space aliens,
since by their very nature (you insist)
they are silly. And even if belief
is a subject that’s stood the test of time,
a poem about a man who believes in space aliens
will be a poem about a man who is either
silly or demented. Belief requires
a world of consequence all around it:
men, women, nature, history, and so on.
Reality, of course, is another matter, but see
what happens (you continue) when these
are put together, as in: “My work
concerns the nature of reality, belief,
and space aliens.” It would be different
if we knew they were there, but we don’t,
and a poem cannot afford to adopt
such a wait-and-see attitude toward the world
which, after all, has provided so many
more compelling subjects. No (you conclude),
not even a poem that argues against them
can survive their presence,
not even if the aliens never appear,
never do or say anything, never threaten us
with their neutron blasters, never steal our women
to populate their planet, not even if their ships
remain hidden, and we are never taken up in them
to be probed and instructed, dazzled and released.

–

from his collection The Probable World, and also collected in Visible Signs; New and Selected Poems. Buy them both for under $2 at amazon. You won’t regret it. They’re great. Very easy to read, and very entertaining.

–

Cool huh? I bet most people have something to say to the speaker about the concept of extra-terrestrial life, or you laughed and thought “yes,” *sniff from the snifter of cognac* “a poem about an alien, how wickedly absurd.” Then the cackle that can only be made with a glinting gold monocle string dangling in front of the left cheek. But, that is covered in the poem. Because although it’s a discussion about discussion about unknowable (and therefore impossible to prove or disprove) things, it leaves a back door by saying “It would be different / if we knew they were there, but we don’t,” because of course, now, the concept of at least some form of alien life in the incalculable depths of space seem all but assured. However, by including that statement, it recalls the time before modern space research when aliens were Metalunans in shiny silver suits and massive foreheads– like the speaker in the poem says “silly.” So a poem that argues for aliens, and against aliens can’t survive the reality of aliens… if they float down one day in their ship with a computerized Rosetta Stone and open the world of earth in on a galactic empire, everything will change. But this poem isn’t arguing for or against aliens. It’s arguing for the argument, and for the concept of a discussion about unknowable things.

The poem is one I’ve come to associate closely with Raab’s style. Very conversational, even including dialog, presents a question in an anecdotal fashion, and ends with a series of images. Not a bad way to lay out a poem if you ask me.

–

Writing exercises:

Write a poem that is your take on aliens. Place it in an anecdotal, or at least loosely narrative setting. Raab’s poem uses poetry to root the discussion in the real, for your poem use current events. Be it high or low culture, root this opinion about aliens in a very specific time, so that even if they do descend, this poem could possibly survive as a ‘pre-alien’ historical document. Or, at least a glimpse into a specific time with an alien tilt.

Write a poem that follows the general pattern of this poem. A narrative poem that digresses a number of times, that presents an argument, or concept that is left somewhat in the air for debate, that is very conversational in tone, and ends with an anaphoric word and series of 3-4 images.

Well, that’s essentially what this article is about. Self-insertion is not a crude term hermaphrodites use, but when an author shows up in their own book, most people think of it purely as a metafictional characteristic, but it’s been around for a long, long time. Think rhapsodes warming up the crowd in ancient Greece. It’s from Switchback, an essay called “I, Chimp” by Nathan Grover. There are some interesting points throughout, and though I’m not sure I buy an early paragraph that states

It really does matter who writes what we read. Stories don’t just happen; they come from some place. A story is a product of the views, experiences, and sensibilities of the writer. The writer and the story inhabit the same world. The source, like plot or character, is an important clue through which we derive meaning from a story.

although I don’t personally agree with this, I’m curious what others think. Comments, anyone? Is knowing who a writer is an important factor to how you read something? In a sense, yes, because if what you have in your hand is a book by your favorite author, you may read a little more convinced that the author knows what they’re doing, as opposed to reading something in a workshop or given to you on loose sheets of paper by a coworker. The sense of authority I can buy, but the meaning? Ehhhhh… I am as yet unconvinced.

The discussion of authorial self-insertion was interesting though… I am generally at least a little interested in almost all things Vonnegut, but the other examples werethoughtful as well. Nice work Mr. Grover.

The Death of Fred Snodgrass
by David Kirby

San Francisco,
April 6, 1974.
It says here
in the Chronicle:
“Fred Snodgrass,
who muffed
an easy fly ball
that helped
to cost
The New York Giants
the 1912
World Series,
died yesterday
at age 86.”
Fuck you,
Fred Snodgrass.
Some things
we never forget.

–
Then there’s a cool article from the Southern Review’s January 2000 issue about David Kirby’s poetry, if you have access to your school’s library you can access it here, or there’s at least the beginning of it available online, which is pretty interesting. Titled “The Invention of the Kirby Poem” by Peter Klappert.

All the following posts will be much less intense, for all those that the first day (and pre-write) didn’t scare away.

Today’s plan is to work on Sonnet 15 some more. You should have a rough draft of the poem already, and if not, welcome to my world. Sorry, I work and am working on a new project also that I’m very excited about. I’ll get one done and revise tonight, I promise.

The verbs will be the first place to scrutinize. In Sonnet 15 moreso than any other sonnet each word needs to carry its own weight, as the lines are both first and last lines of separate poems. Look for common, simple words like do, did, have, was, had. They’re called auxiliary verbs. They are ‘helping verbs’ which means they help other words instead of standing on their own. A good verb is probably the strongest type of word, you shouldn’t waste a word that could really set the line apart from the familiar to ‘help’ an adjective. Adjectives are like pawns. They’re very important to the poem’s infrastructure, but nouns and verbs run the show. Even if there aren’t any auxiliary verbs, there’s always stronger and weaker verbs by comparison. Weigh your verbs against each other. Even if they’re still fairly strong, just consider other options. Look through a thesaurus. It’s not a literary crime. It doesn’t make you a thesaurus-poet. You’re not stilting your writing, you’re enhancing it. Obviously you’ll only make changes that both sound, and are more appropriate for their context. So, if anyone had hesitations about using a thesaurus, as I know many young poets are, relax. It’s like alcohol, great in moderation (and perhaps even slight excess on occasion).

Before you go through, though, there’s a little exercise. Here’s how I’d do it, for efficiency. Click here, and then open a new window. change the size of the new window so it’s less than half of the screen size. Load http://dictionary.reference.com there. Go over the list of verbs I posted (or if anyone can find a better list, please let me know) and if a particular word strikes you, look through your poem and see if there’s a place for that word in Sonnet 15. If not, write it in a file where you’ve got your other ILHCA exercises. If you don’t have an ILHCA file or folder, make one. Haha, that’s very important. Easier access means you may actually utilize these words.

And before you take off your poetic cap, look over that list of perspectives, or poem ideas for the surrounding sonnets. If you don’t have a list of ideas for your heroic crown’s individual sonnets, well shame on you. Make one now. Consider the line repetition when thinking of the sequence’s, well, sequence. Sonnet 1 begins with Line 1 of Sonnet 15. That’s the first line of your whole sequence that the reader will see. Make sure you hook them with something. Leave something interesting unanswered. Or mention something very quirky in the poem that will potentially perk the reader’s attention so they wonder if the thing (be it a porch swing with one chain broken that no one had the heart to fix, Jerome’s missing fingers, whatever) will come back. Hoping that it will. That’s what you really want to accomplish with the first sonnet. You want the reader speculating about what’s coming next, because they’ve got a long ways to go.

Try to narrow down each line of Sonnet 15 to three possible perspectives/aspects (ie poem’s contribution to the whole of the sequence). If you have definite ideas that work with particular lines from Sonnet 15, power to you. That’s what you want. The pieces to fall together. If they haven’t fallen together yet, fear not. We’ve just begun. The puzzle will begin to take shape by the end of next week, I promise.

This is no pre-write. Though the pre-write exercises will be very helpful to the forming of your heroic crown. To review the rules of a sonnet go to the pre-write day here. The heroic crown is this: A sequence of fourteen sonnets and a fifteenth sonnet composed of the first line of each of the other sonnets. To further gum up the works there’s a repetition that links together the sonnets like a brass brad. It’s the same in all of the poems. The first line of the poem is identical to the last line of the previous poem. So Sonnet 2’s first line is the same as the last line of Sonnet 1. Sonnet 3’s first line is the same as Sonnet 2’s last line. And so on. The only other caveat is that Sonnet 1’s opening line is repeated as the last line of Sonnet 14. That brings the sequence full circle, and Sonnet 15 sort of the overview or consensus.

So how do you write this? Where do you begin? The ‘artist’ opinion would be, if it’s in you just write. But that’s not necessarily applying here. So, like any overly daunting maze, we’ll take the easy route and begin at the end. Sonnet 15. It will be much easier to rework single lines into a poem than to work 14 unrelated lines into a thematic culmination that the final poem in such a long sequence needs to be. So we need to begin with the end. Easy enough.

Before we just start writing, though, realize that these rhymes are very important. Since there’s the line repetition of the last line of the previous poem and the first lines, which means that for each repeated line, there must be a rhyme from the previous poem’s final couplet, and from that poem’s opening ABAB. So each ‘first line’ needs 2 rhyming words, not just the regular pair (unless you feel, like MC Robust, who once wrote “I’m so dope I can rhyme first place with first place”. Then, since Sonnet 15 is completely first lines, and has its own rhyme scheme. So each rhyming word in Sonnet 15 will need a total of 6 rhymes (which doesn’t include the duplicate lines which will obviously be the same word). Don’t be afraid, just remember that for Sonnet 15 you want to look especially for common end sounds. Sounds like /ite/o/ed/ay/el/ etc. Go to RhymeZone and buzz around for words that are linked if you get stuck. Just keep this prolific rhyming in the back of your mind while you figure out what you’re writing about.

So you know what the heroic crown is, and are frightened, let’s get to the fun part: what’s it going to be about? Well, the heroic crown is traditionally centered around one thing, like a person. We’re going to base our heroic crowns around an event. Sonnet 15 will be a narrative (at least roughly) of an especially significant (or traumatic) event. It could be a car accident, the demolition of a family home, a drug deal shootout, winning the lottery, getting fired, suicide, or you could get all sappy and have it be about noticing the smell your significant other (perfume, nail polish, cologne, shampoo, sweat, whatever) . Each sonnet will be aiming to add a different perspective on the final poem in the sequence, Sonnet 15. Whether it’s another narrative regarding related incidents, or something from a witness’s pasts that parallel this experience, or whatever.

Before we go any further, pick an event. Decide what this whole heroic crown is going to revolve around. The great thing is that each sonnet doesn’t have to be narratively related to the poem as long as they’re thematically connected, and can be placed at the scene in anyway, via physical presence, hearing or seeing the incident after the fact, perhaps a prescient narrative before the actual incident- ie an odd coincidence. So the event doesn’t have to be some big sweeping thing, it just has to be resonant.

Now that you have the topic, before you write Sonnet 15 you have to come up with perspectives for the other sonnets. You don’t necessarily need to know all of them, but knowing at least a few will help you cater lines to that perspective, as it’ll be used as a first line (and last line) in separate poems as well as in this final sonnet. Those who did the pre-write look at your list of perspectives, evaluate them thinking of your chosen topic. Once you have those perspectives, think of a word or phrase that might be kind of unique to that person/thing’s vernacular, but not so entirely unique that it’d be ridiculously out of place.

And finally, when you’re writing this first sonnet remember that each line will be the final, and also the opening line of a poem. That means that there should be solid imagery, and whenever possible an opening for enjambment. Ending lines on actions or images is a good way to keep that enjambment open so when the line begins the poem it can continue without being endstopped. This adds variation within the repetition and makes it even less noticeable. Also, ending on an image or an action adds some extra drama or resonance to a last line like “white in the wind the scarf slipped, and then dropped.” as the final line of a poem, then the next poem begins “White in the wind the scarf slipped and then dropped / from the girl’s pale fingers…”

So:

1) Use common sounds for the rhymes in this first (last) sonnet, Sonnet 15.

2) Try to end lines as openly as you can to aid later enjambment.

3) Pick an event that is especially resonant. There will be 210 lines of rhymed poetry in this sequence (including the 28 repeated lines) which revolves in one way or another around this event. That’s a lot to ask of your reader. Keep it interesting.

We’ll work on Sonnet 15’s rough draft tomorrow, and plan out the sequence. Each day there will be suggested themes for individual sonnets, such as color themes, certain perspectives, rhymes, and research assignments to help you in the course of the sequence. Good luck!

OK, Day 1 is all about being prepared for this intricate sequence, so to prepare for that, let’s remember the fun of rhyming, rhythm and repetition. Let’s assume you’re writing Shakespearean Sonnets, with a rhyme scheme of ABABCDCDEFEFGG, though there are other forms, here’s a few options with some info about the forms. But I’m going to be leading you through the English Sonnet Crown, or Shakespearean or whatever you want to call it. Let’s start out with standard sonnet rules:

1) Iambic pentameter. “The cow will jump again, the next mid-day.” It’s like a heartbeat- ba-Duh, ba-Duh, ba-Duh, ba-Duh, ba-Duh. Five poetic feet (metric units) of two syllables, the first un-stressed, the second stressed. As in: when in doubt, sound it out. Say the words aloud and find out where the stresses are. Many recent sonneteers have included lots of alternate metric plans, or a lack of plan, substituted for a syllabic line organization. What that means, if you don’t follow, is that instead of worrying about what syllable is stressed, they stress about making sure the line has ten total syllables, stresses be damned.

2) Rhyme Scheme: ABABCDCDEFEFGG- that simple. (A) rhymes with (A) , each letter represents a line’s ending word.

3) Turn: This isn’t an absolute necessity, but many sonnets have a turn around lines 8-9… just past what would be the first octave in the Italian sonnet. What is a turn? It’s when the poem takes what it’d done in the beginning of the poem and changes its direction slightly, it turns the poem so that it isn’t completely predictable. It’s the turning over of the leaf, the brilliant orange is brown underneath. If you want your sonnets to have a non-traditional approach to the turn, though, go for it!

Now, a Heroic Crown of sonnets is 15 related sonnets, usually dealing with slightly different aspects of the same subject. For the sake of this experiment, we’ll base our crown around an event. First, though, we have to consider the amount of rhyming we’ll need to do. Each poem’s ending line must have two other rhyming words within the surrounding poems (the final couplet’s pair, and the opening ABAB of the next poem) as well as having to rhyme in poem 15, which means that there needs to be 2 sets of that rhyme, with 3 separate combinations for that rhyme. We’ll do the actual crunching of numbers tomorrow.

As the rules of the crown say that there’s a repetition of last/first lines that links the poems to each other. This means that the last line of poem one is the same as the first line of poem two. then the last line of poem two is the first line of poem three and so on, poem 14 begins with the last line of poem 13, then ends with the first line from page 1. Poem 15 is a combination of all first lines. So it only makes sense to work backwards. To facilitate this repetition without seeming, well, repetitive, there is a lot of forethought required. Today’s task is research. Find 20 of the following: Homonyms (search Alan Cooper’s Homonym list free online here) Groups of 3 interesting rhyming words (my favorite rhyming dictionary is RhymeZone) which, if at all possible, have some sort of link between them besides rhyming; and also come up with 25 different possible perspectives for one event. Think the opinion of animals and inanimate objects as well as people, and don’t feel stifled by time or space or living or dead or anything. You’ll only need at most 15 of these for the final product, but having a surplus is nice when you’re narrowing down the larger implications and suggestions of the piece. You’ll find patterns in the rhymes, perspectives and homonyms that will hopefully drive a few of those earlier poems to their home. Work on that for now. We’ll begin working on forming Poem 15 tomorrow.

This little piece originally appeared in the Alaska Quarterly Review, then in her collection Tumble Home, or, seven short-short, or just plain short stories and an 86 page novella. Very good stuff. There’s an image of an owl’s face, I won’t ruin it for you, but I’d been attributing it to Li-Young Lee, someone who I was also reading a lot of at the time. I just remember walking around the hotel I worked at thinking about how perfect the description, how apt. I also like that she (Hempel) doesn’t connect the dots for the reader, she just presents them in a clear pattern and says, essentially, “Have at it!” More after the story.

Church Cancels Cow
by Amy Hempel

Pheasant feathers in a plastic jack-o’-lantern–this is the way people decorate graves in October across from my house. In winter they tie wreaths to the stones like evergreen pendants in December. The halved-apple faces of owls on a branch will spook you, walking at dusk as I do with my dog who finds the one real pumpkin, small on a stem, and carries it off and flings it and retrieves, leaving on the pumpkin the marks of her teeth, the only desecration in these rows of tended plots.

Or not, according to the woman at the wheel of the red Honda Civic that appears from behind the Japanese maple and proceeds past the hedge of arborvitae where she slows and then rolls down her window to say, “You should keep that dog on a leash.” She says, “That dog left faces on my mother’s grave.”

When I realize she means feces, I say my dog didn’t do it. She says yes, my dog did it. I say, “Did you see this dog leave feces on the grave?” She says, “I found faces on my mother’s grave. I had to clean them off.” I say there are other dogs that walk here. I say my dog goes in the woods before the place where the headstones start.

I leave her talking to me from her car. I walk away with my dog in the direction of my house, and she follows in her car so I turn back around and lead her through the cemetery and sit down on a random grave and take a wire brush from the pocket of my coat and begin to groom my dog, brushing slowly from the ends up to the skin so as not to tug and hurt her. I stay where I am until the woman drives away, and I stay until she reappears. When she leaves the second time, she leaves rubber in the road.

For days I see her car across the street, parked on the little-used access road, her at the wheel just watching my house where my dog patrols the yard, unmistakeable dog. I write down her license plate number, so what. I pull weeds with my back to her. And after thoughts of worse things than bricks coming flying through the windows of my house, I pull off grass-stained gloves and cross to her car and say, “You know, I’m on your side about this. I have relatives buried here, and I don’t want to find faces on their graves.”

She says, “You have relatives buried here?”

For peace of mind I will lie about any thing at any time.

In fact, she says, she has counted three dogs the other day from her car. Like counting cows, in the game I played in cars when the family went out on long drives. My brother and I were told to count cows in the fields we passed along the way, me counting cows on one side of the road, my brother counting cows on the other. But if we passed a church, the person on whose side the church appeared had to start their count over again.

Why did church cancel cow? The question was not a question back then, and when I try to think why, the best I can guess is–because we were having fun? Until I mention it to my brother who says, “Don’t you remember? You don’t remember. It was cemetery, not church, that cancels cow.”

And why it comes to me now.

—
Right? Take it in for a second.
/
,
.

.
,
/
OK, I just wanted to talk a little about the layering and parallels in this piece. There’s the obvious parallels: Cemetery from the cow game and from the Japanese lady’s face-stained grave; the counting of dogs and the counting of cows, both from a car. What really got me was the profundity of the game these kids were playing, and whether or not they were told the cemetery cancels cow rule or they made it up themselves, they clearly understood the concept of death at a young age. And though the narrator clearly thinks the Japanese lady’s absurd, her behavior in such a close proximity to death is humanized by the remembrance of mortality’s early place in even the lighter times.

Also, come on, faces/feces is pretty funny, or, that the narrator calls them faces when she confronts the stalker in her car. I love that. I always think of the Big Lebowski, how the Dude took phrases or unique words he’d heard earlier in the movie and says them. Or more recently in Hot Fuzz when Danny repeats Angel’s vocabulary guideline corrections immediately, and often incorrectly (”What made you want to be a policeman officer?”). The narrator here, was being more wiseass about it, which is funny also. Then the repetition of faces with that amazing “halved-apple faces of owls” which is so accurate. See:

Then of course there are other little things, like: “When she leaves the second time she leaves rubber in the road” which is a pretty crafty way to make “she peeled out” artistic. Small details like that are things that you need to pay close attention to in your own writing. Saying things in an easily understandable, but unique way. Something that the reader hasn’t read fifty times. The formatting is also a little off from ’standard’ with the dialog (normally each . This choice helps the reader breeze through the dialog a little more smoothly, I think. Though if it would slow the reader down, who knows, unless someone’s really curious, I guess they could reformat it themselves and report back.

This is a little too long to submit to the Indiana Review 1/2k prize, as it’s 591 words, but it’s close. A lot can be done in 500 words, as the notoriously brief Amy Hempel proves yet again here. My favorite, and many people’s favorite Hempel story is “In the Cemetery Where Al Jolson is Buried” which is in Reasons to Live as well as her collected stories… but I also found this little article about the story and a little research about the, apparently semi-autobiographical story. Very interesting, posted at the Hipster Book Club.

Here’s an interesting little series of interviews with Santa Fe poets about love poems… it was funny seeing Jon Davis (aka Chuck Calabreze) quote the one Pablo Neruda book as bad, and Artur Sze quote it as good… though I did use the same line Sze quoted as the little epigraph for my poem On Dog Mountain, but it’s still unpublished, so who knows… maybe it was a bad place to start from. Anyway, check it out, it’s not terribly wrong, and it’s always interesting to hear poets’ opinions on poetry…

Did you realize that where you break your lines affects how the reader’s eye reads it. “What?” you ask. Or maybe you don’t, maybe you say “No crap.” But assuming you were slightly curious see the Sharon Olds poem, “The Death of Marilyn Monroe” for an example:

for a drink or two, but they could not meet
each other’s eyes.
Their lives took
a turn–one had nightmares, strange
pains …

By breaking on “meet” the line initially sounds like they couldn’t meet, as in get together, without the context of the next line, which changes the direction of the previous line. Instead of not being able to meet they can’t meet each others eyes. As the poem is about a pivotal, and traumatic event, the double (potential) meaning of “meet” works because in the world of the poem it might’ve made sense if that night they didn’t meet up for drinks afterwards… and then just after that “strange” breaks so that it sounds like the “strange” is qualifying the nightmares, but with the next line it’s amended to pains… This little trick comes courtesy of your reader, actually. Because the way (at least most people) read poetry includes at least a momentary pause at line’s end as their eyes jump back to the beginning of the next line, and their brain begins to process the information it had just read, hence momentarily reading of the line as it’s own little entity.

Why would you want to mislead someone? Because one of the biggest and most important aspects of a poem is the ability to surprise the reader. It’s what keeps people reading. What will happen next? Why do you think popular fiction is so popular? It is almost always plot driven, it keeps the readers wondering what will happen next. By utilizing the tiny twists of a good line break you can propel the reader through the poem much more energetically.

I see a lot of student writing in which characters say things like “You are not the one who is to blame for all of these dark maroon, crescent moon-shaped stains on the carpet.” It may not ever be technically wrong, there are two problems. One, and this always has exceptions, but generally people speak in somewhat fragmented sentences full of contractions (like you’re aren’t who’s) as opposed to you are or are not. Going to blame, “You’re not to blame” or “You aren’t the one to blame” would both be more believable sentences from a typical person… and if they’re atypical, that needs to be clear, and should have a rationale behind it in line with themes or plot. The more that everything ties together, the tighter your prose will be, ya dig?

OK, the second thing wrong with the sentence “for all of these dark maroon, crescent moon-shaped stains on the carpet.” Again, an atypical person might, maybe say something like this, like, a miserable poet character (aren’t they all miserable? Wait…) but the general populous will be more to the point and less writerly in their descriptions. They’d say “for the stains” or “for the carpet” or “fo’ dese dadgumit shee-razz stainz in this heah cahpet,” if it’s Buck Fanshaw talking maybe. So putting it together: “You’re not to blame for the carpet,” or “You aren’t the one to blame for the stains.”

and once more for effect, side-by-side.

“You are not the one who is to blame for all of these dark maroon, crescent moon-shaped stains on the carpet.”

or

“You’re not to blame for the carpet.”

or switch it up entirely keeping the same sentiment with:

“The stains aren’t your fault.”

That sound reasonable enough? If not, eh, it’s just water off a duck’s back to me. But if it sounded like it might make a little sense, go through your prose and analyze the dialog with a specific eye for possible contractions/simplifications, especially about non-plot-point issues.

I just wanted to write a little post about the idea of “Narrative Weight” in prose, because it is a place where much (especially) student writing falls short. The idea is simple enough, Every page, paragraph, even every word needs to do one of two things: further the plot or themes, or further the reader’s understanding of a character. Basically, everything you write needs to justify its own worth within the text. This isn’t quite as important in prose as it is in poetry, but it is important. You can’t just write loosey-goosey in your prose and expect to be dubbed TC Boyle Jr. or something.

So your prose’s narrative weight is one thing to consider during the editing process. Begin checking every scene to make sure that something new is occurring, or some new insight is gained, if not, either try to working something in, either a bit of foreshadowing, a bit more about your character, or something about the plot should be furthered. It is a good idea to streamline your fiction as much as you can to make it the most effective presentation of the story you’ve thought up. There you go. Another thing to consider in your writing: Narrative weight. Oftentimes extraneous detail or ancillary characters can throw off the pace of a book, or slacken the tension because they aren’t pulling their own narrative weight. So weigh your words like they’re boxers about to go into the ring or your fictional world. If they don’t weigh enough when it comes to your plot, themes or character, then it might be time to cancel that fight, perhaps give some other words a shot. Word.

The Guardian’s blog recently posted an article titled “Literary Sex is Such a Turn-Off” I don’t necessarily agree with the statements about how to write sex, but who am I to disagree with Lee Rourke? I’ve somehow missed most of these sex-filled books I keep hearing about…

So many amazing things are said daily. Usually, amazing in a bad way. But amazing’s still amazing.

For instance, in a class the other day, to prove a point about cave paintings, the professor said that in the 18th century the world was only around 7000 years old, but now, we know it’s billions of years old. And he even went on to say that because of the scientific research we’ve gone from the religious tenet that these paintings couldn’t possibly be 10,000, or even a million years old, and must be more recent– therefore not such a dramatic discovery. A girl a couple rows behind me said “That doesn’t add up. If it was only seven thousand years old before, how can it be so old now?”

Now, it’d be hard to get to the line of dialog in the same way, about cave paintings, but there are plenty of other reasons to explain the difference in ‘creation’ dates between cultures, and if you have a character you want to showcase as not the smartest peanut in the turd, merely by paying slight attention to those around you, you’ve got a ready-made scenario. Give it a shot.

Here is the poem.

The Red Wheelbarrow by William Carlos Williams

so much depends
upon

a red wheel
barrow

glazed with rain
water

beside the white
chickens.

——

OK, I’ll break this down via form, and meaning. Not to say this is what was intended by Mr. Williams, but this is how I’m looking it, so take it as you will.

——

Form: Syllabically the poem is structured, line by line: 4/2 - 3/2 - 3/2 - 4/2. That’s only 22 syllables total. Remember that. The middle two stanzas break a compound word at the line break, without a hyphen. Very short poem, very tightly structured.

——

Meaning: OK, it’s imagistic. It’s minimalistic. The last three stanzas set the scene. We see the red wheelbarrow, that it is out in the rain, and that there are chickens. So much depends upon the words “So much depends / upon” in this poem. You can bring literary theory about the symbolism of rain, or color theory with the red, but in my mind those are less important. The first stanza, that’s another story. Why would so much depend upon a wheelbarrow? What do we know about, well, anything, in the universe of this poem, but what do we know of the location, the world? We know there are chickens and a wheelbarrow. Where would you find those two things? A farm is my guess. Why would so much depend on the wheelbarrow? What is a wheelbarrow to a farmer? A necessity. A farmer needs a wheelbarrow to complete his tasks, maintain his livelihood, his very life. Thus, so much depends upon a red wheelbarrow glazed with rainwater beside the white chickens.

Moving Water, Tucson

Thunderclouds gathered every afternoon during the monsoons. Warm rain felt good on faces lifted to lick water from the sky. We played outside, having sense enough to go out and revel in the rain. We savored the first cool hours since summer hit.

The arroyo behind our house trickled with moving water. Kids gathered to see what it might bring. Tumbleweed, spears of ocotillo, creosote, a doll’s arm, some kid’s fort. Broken bottles, a red sweater. Whatever was nailed down, torn loose.

We stood on edges of sand, waiting for brown walls of water. We could hear it, massive water, not far off. The whole desert might come apart at once, might send horny toads and Gila monsters swirling, wet nightmares clawing both banks of the worst they could imagine and then some.

Under sheet lightning cracking the sky, somebody’s teenaged brother decided to ride the flash flood. He stood on wood in the bottom of the ditch, straddling the puny stream. “Get out, it’s coming,” kids yelled. “GET OUT,” we yelled. The kid bent his knees, held out his arms.

Land turned liquid that fast, water yanked our feet, stole our thongs, pulled in the edges of the arroyo, dragged whole trees root wads and all along, battering rams thrust downstream, anything you left there gone, anything you meant to go back and get, history, water so high you couldn’t touch bottom, water so fast you couldn’t get out of it, water so huge the earth couldn’t take it, water. We couldn’t step back. We had to be there, to see for ourselves. Water in a place where water’s always holy. Water remaking the world.

That kid on plywood, that kid waiting for the flood. He stood and the water lifted him. He stood, his eyes not seeing us. For a moment, we all wanted to be him, to be part of something so wet, so fast, so powerful, so much bigger than ourselves. That kid rode the flash flood inside us, the flash flood outside us. Artist unglued on a scrap of glued wood. For a few drenched seconds, he rode. The water took him, faster than you can believe. He kept his head up. Water you couldn’t see through, water half dirt, water whirling hard. Heavy rain weighed down our clothes. We stepped closer to the crumbling shore, saw him downstream smash against the footbridge at the end of the block. Water held him there, rushing on.

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Here’s an essay by Peggy Shumaker titled Prose Poems, Paragraphs, Brief Lyric Nonfiction. The 400 word story, flash fiction, narrative prose poem, short short, whatever, appeared in the collection Short Takes, which is a really cool book about the short-short in creative non fiction. Definitely a worthwhile read. It got me hooked on cnf short-shorts. Thanks also, to Sydney Brown. Word.

Coming from the UK (New York) Times, this interesting article about Cormac McCarthy. I’m sad to admit other than his name, and the title of some of his books (mostly ones turned into movies) I’d be lost to tell you anything about the Pulitzer Prize winning man, or even his writing style. It’s one of those rare days where I can say “I learned something today.”

There are those who have a blind hatred for the sci-fi/fantasy and won’t crack the cover unless looking for something to take a jab at. Funk those people. The majority of people who read (and more importantly, who buy books) look for entertainment within their substance, and will suspend disbelief for a good enough yarn. What elevates a good science fiction/fantasy novel from the base term of “genre” is usually the development of characters. All other factors are important, but the thing that is the same about almost all “genre” novels, is the cast of half sketched archetypal, flat characters, while lavish details of scene and exposition of the ‘world’ thicken the book without connecting, thus slowly disconnecting the reader from the character. Good fiction develops interesting characters until you feel like you know them, and when their decisions surprise you, even then you understand the choices. So, for those who write something they despise being considered “genre-dreck” or whatever, consider the strength of your characters as well as the people you’ve chosen to share your work with. Some have plugged their ears entirely, but most just need a little extra convincing. But don’t forget that people love a good saga. Just ask Issac Asimov, JRR Tolkien, Ursala LeGuin, CS Lewis, Frank Herbert etc etc.

I’ve come into some interesting discussion on this topic when it comes to poetry. After a reading a teacher at the community college I was attending asked me how the incident resonated with me now, and I was a bit taken aback. Many people view poetry as something entirely personal, as opposed to another form of literature, where the poet takes on the role of narrator instead of tape recorder for their confession. It’s kind of weird. If you write novels then people are pretty willing to accept the first person as a fictional account, but when it comes to poetry, the “I” carries a little more weight. It’s especially weighty when you use personal points to spark your poem. I was lucky enough to have a selection of three poems accepted to the Southern Review, including a piece called Lefsa, which takes a snippet I remember from Christmastime when I was young, of my grandmother making lefsa, and sets that in a fictional narrative, in which everything else has nothing to do with reality, yet, I’m afraid to show the poem to my father’s side of the family, as they’ll recognize the lefsa, and take the poem as autobiographical. I’ve written poems about fictional families and incidents so many times, I don’t even want to think how messed up I’d be if they were all real… or what people may think of me if they’ve just caught my pieces in various journals or a collection. Wow.  My consolation is that I think those who take a strong interest in poetry won’t feel cheated when they read my fictional poems.

Slurve Magazine had a wonderful interview with David Kirby. Plenty of info to recall and site for any future essays that personal facts or criticism might help with. And here’s an essay about David Kirby from Research in Review. He’s a really interesting and witty guy, definitely both good reads. The guy got his PhD from Johns Hopkins at 23, and has published tons of books of essays, criticism, reviews and poems, and a genuinely badass artist in the  art of the compound sentence.

“He was deranged, he was… lunatic.
He didn’t seem to like me very much.
He had threatened to kill me in public.”
“Why would he want to kill you in public?”
“I think she meant he threatened,
in public, to kill her.” “Oh.”

That’s right, I just lineated dialog from Clue. Found poem. I found it. Mine. Copywrite copyright copyrite cop-e-wright kah-pee-rye’t.

But the point is, confusion can be caused by even correct phrasing. By saying “He was deranged, he was… lunatic. He didn’t seem to like me very much. He had threatened to kill me in public.” Mrs. White had correctly asserted that her deceased husband had, as Colonel Mustard explained here to Miss Scarlet, in public, threatened to kill her. As in around a bunch of other people, most likely strangers. However, if that was the case, a pause, or comma should be in place, or perhaps if you absolutely despise punctuation in your poetry, maybe because you saw the photo on the back of Rain in the Trees and decided you’d dedicate your life to be like a man with such wavy locks, but whatever the reason, a line break could add that half-pause of enjambment that would isolate the “in public” from the threatening. The best course of action, when at all possible, is to rephrase. For instance, “He had threatened to kill my in public” could be reworded to “He had publicly threatened to kill me.” and it would remove any confusion.

It may not seem like a big deal, but as a reader for journals, when you’re discussing the piece with other readers, and as much time is spent discussing the meaning of a small passage as the merits of its imagery, 9 times out of 10 it doesn’t make it in. So if it’s in your interest to avoid general confusion, as it generally should be, watch your phrasing carefully for ambiguity. And when that ambiguity is too perfect to not call attention to, only then enjoy the linguistic pleasure.