...with 2 new poems!

These took me a while to get down on paper, mainly because my Muses went AWOL. In the end determination won, though, and so I finally managed to get the concepts worked into actual poems. Both are dedicated to someone, because ultimately it is life that gets me to think about things I would like to write.

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The Fall of Narcissus  [E] On a man's vanity. by L.V. van Efveren

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I, Object  [ASR] On the treatment of women by some kinds of men. by L.V. van Efveren

So I finally, finally... FINALLY finished the poem I've been frustrated about for the past two months or so. Am I happy with it? Quite. It was a small nightmare to get the words down on paper, and once I had finally pinned (penned?) them in graphite there were bits and pieces that needed serious editing to actually, like... work. Yeah.

How long was this process? Here's a breakdown:

First stanza: 5 minutes.
Second stanza: 2 months.
Remaining stanzas: 2 days.
Editing: Do. Not. Ask.

The result, though, is something I can actually feel proud of- right now I feel extremely accomplished, and not just because I finally got past the near-fatal case of WB I've been dealing with. I'm feeling strangely euphoric about this whole affair, actually!

I chose and stuck with Ovid's version of the tale of Atalanta and Hippomenes to form the basis of the piece. I didn't go in for the same graphic style, but did choose to capture and allude to some of the more primal urges he describes so vividly, because in my eyes they are the essence of the tale. Interestingly enough, Ovid accounts for Atalanta's refusal to wed using the device of prophecy: when Atalanta goes to consult a god by means of an oracle she is warned against it. While neither god nor oracle is specified, it seemed likely to me that Apollo's Oracle at Delphi was the one in question.

As a hunter god (among many other things) and as the brother of Artemis (to whom Atalanta took an oath of virginity in another version of the tale) he would have been an appropriate deity for her to consult. There is also Apollo's own and similarly doomed race to be considered: the tale of Apollo and Daphne, which is told much earlier in Metamorphoses. The victor's crown of laurels attributed to Apollo is explained in this myth, and adds another suitable link to Atalanta- it would have been her due many times over by the time Hippomenes challenges her. At the same time, the laurel also symbolises Daphne's plight, juxtaposing the desire to win with the desire to flee. It is also interesting to note that Aphrodite (Venus) is directly and strongly involved in both pursuits.

These parallels have helped to shape my own retelling of the tale, although unlike the myths inspiring this version it might be said that it has a slightly happier ending.

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Melanion's Song  [13+] A tribute to a lover. by L.V. van Efveren

I've discovered that love is a horrible muse. Or rather, is anything but a muse. I have been over the moon for the past two months or so, and while I would love to put the feeling into words, every time I sit down to try I find myself at a loss. Usually I just end up snuggling up in the comfort of this warm blanket of emotion, going over all these little things that have me grinning like an idiot... and in the process end up producing nothing at all.

It is not strange, then, that I have been unable to write pretty much anything recently, although with dicipline and determination I have managed an occasional sentence or two. Right now I have my mind set on finishing a poem I've been mulling over for the past two months and I intend to finish it this week. With this in mind I've actually- finally!- managed to get the second stanza down, although it needs some polishing. The first one I am happy with, so I suppose I may as well share it as a sample of what is to come.

Melanion's Song

Too quick was she for any man
to catch her once she went and ran.
Too nimble for an honest win
was Atalanta, swift as sin.


More to come. Soon. I hope.
 

Think I'm coming down with something, which is generally uncool... and making my head feel stuffed with cotton. So, in the category of fail quotes of epic failure, I present:

Elv: I'll breathe when I'm d- oh, wait, no... I won't.
 

Been very absent lately and written all of one stanza of a poem in the past 2 months. Very productive. Yeah.

Generally been crazy busy with work, exams, and being a total fussbucket. Taken some time to party and go crazy (heading out again soon!) and enjoy the sunshine while it lasts. When none of that occupies my mind, the general euphoria of head^heels sends my brain on a mad dash after its own tail. On the whole it doesn't do any wonders for my productivity, or my attention span. Yay for procrastination!

Did have a look at the new and improved Port features and took a minute to add a picture of myself along with some info. Go see!
 

We've all had them- moments when we get excited about seeing a new review, only to have our hopes dashed by the content of said review. It could be for any number of reasons, but the person taking a moment of their time to tell you what they felt was wrong with your piece was not too positive about it. This is not always pleasant to hear, but it's valuable input and usually we can learn a thing or two from it even if we don't take everything in the review to heart.

Usually.

Even the best authors aren't lauded for every single thing they write, every single step of the way. They've faced criticism, bad press reviews (a good reminder why WDC's private review option can be a blessing), moody editors and any number of issues anyone with a pen, a bit of paper and an idea might run into. So really, it's unreasonable to expect that your audience will always be excited about whatever it is you choose to write down, with the possible exception of your parents if they happen to be your only audience.

But even keeping this in mind, some reviews can still manage to be frustrating. In those instances, it is difficult to determine how to respond to a review. If someone is patently rude and nonconstructive, the best approach is just to let it slide, however hard it may be at first. A reply written in anger is, after all, as nonconstructive as the comment that prompted it. It gets trickier, though, when people are actually trying to be helpful. I'm a cynical bitch, so the first thing I think upon reading comments like that isn't the most tactful reply.

The section below contains a few examples of comments everyone will probably have received at some point, in some form or other, along with a selection of replies to reviews like these that (fortunately) never made it to my Sent Items. I've added a few notes, because when cynical and caffeine-deprived, I tend to produce more snappy one-liners than the average Hollywood blockbuster.


Review: You misspelled word such-and-such.
Response: No, I didn't. Invest in a dictionary.
Note: No, seriously. Invest some time in looking at a dictionary. You might discover you were the one who was wrong. This is especially true about frequently misspelled words, and there are many. It's also really, really bad to teach someone something which is blatantly wrong and, ultimately, it's also entirely nonconstructive.

Review (variant of above): You misspelled words A, B, C...
Response: No I didn't. Invest in a dictionary. Learn some English.
Note: British English is not American English. There's some variation going on with the spelling between them, but as long as an author uses one or the other consistently, neither spelling can be considered wrong. Besides, if you want to talk about spelling and wrong, that's an aspect of linguistics far more complicated than most people realise. Without some sound knowledge about phonetics and philology, you don't want to be touching that.

Review: Your punctuation's wrong.
Response: No it's not. Learn to punctuate.
Note: Punctuation's tricky, and although many people think so, there's no real black-and-white simplicity to it. The rules of punctuation aren't set in stone, although some are clearer than others, like a full stop belonging at the end of a sentence. Once it gets to things like commas, dashes and semi-colons, it gets to a grey area that linguists can argue endlessly about amongst each other. Your English teacher was teaching a preferred style, not a rule. The particular phrasing an author chose to use might not be the most elegant option available, but that doesn't make it wrong.

Review: Your grammar is wrong.
Response: Do you even know the definition of grammar?
Note: Grammar is not the same as syntax, nor is it the same as punctuation (including capitalisation). If you can't get your terminology right, why on Earth should your advice be taken seriously?

Review: You're not supposed to capitalise personal pronouns.
Response: Ever opened a Bible?
Note: Sometimes an author intentionally breaks a set convention. This could be done in any number of ways, from the above mentioned example to weird spelling or messed up syntax. Ultimately, though, there is a reason for it. Is it an isolated incident, or is there a pattern? If there is, it's probably worth considering why the pattern is there, rather than assuming that the author simply made a language boo-boo. It might just be a Revelation.

Review: Your story needs more life.
Response: Congratulations, you completely missed the point.
Note: It's important to try and determine the theme of a story to understand the style better. A story about death could have been written in a more severe tone for the specific purpose of adding another layer to the way the topic at hand is presented. It might not be your particular cup of coffee, but understanding what a story is really about is vital when trying to give tips for improvement. If you leave the impression that you have no idea what's going on in the first place (or actually really don't), then chances are that the author won't take a single suggestion seriously.
 

Style; a summary
To me style indicates the sum of the poetic devices employed by a poet. It is a culmination of form, placement, punctuation, rhyme, rhythm, shape, and the many aspects of meaning. Style can be the shape of one particular poem, or it can be the pattern of a poet’s collected works.

We have to see the whole picture before we can really start making proper sense of it, insofar as the poem or poet allows for this. Sometimes just the one poem is enough, sometimes it is necessary to look at a poet’s other works to get some understanding about why the poem was presented in a certain way. Often what seems like a flaw or failure of skill turns out to be a very careful and deliberate insertion.

When reading and reviewing poetry I keep all these things in mind before I start forming an opinion. A flaw in itself may be ugly, but a fault in a poem that stresses that which is broken can be, in its own way, brilliantly beautiful.

Shape
Along with placement, shape makes for an important ingredient when it comes to presenting a poem. The two are closely linked. What is the effect of writing a poem, or parts of a poem, in ALL CAPS? What does it add to put something in bold, or italics? Is there significance in making words a certain colour?

I think there is. The way a poem is presented sets the tone before a reader ever gets a chance to read it. Some things will immediately stand out, and will be reinforced because of this. The shape you give the words in your poem (including font type and size, as already pointed out under Placement  ) can be used to convey a certain mood beyond the actual words you have chosen.

For example, a poem entirely in italics feels more dream-like and surreal to me. It adds a certain wistful quality beyond the content of the poem. It can take reality and then move a step back, set it aside and paint a slightly different picture of what was, what will be, or what might have been. A poet can choose to format an entire poem this way, or only parts of the poem. This may represent an intruding thought or voice, or a conflicting idea. It can stress a point or be used to confuse readers, depending on the purpose of the poet.

Isn't this a powerful tool?
Or is it too unconventional?


Closing piece tomorrow: Style.
 

Rhythm
Another important aspect of poetry is rhythm. It is helped into being by poetic form, types of rhyme and meter, but despite all that it is sometimes difficult to determine whether or not a poem has rhythm just by seeing it written down. Whenever I can’t figure out a poem's rhythm, I resort to good old-fashioned reading the poem aloud. Often I discover that the poem has a better flow than I first thought, and that it works much better than I would initially have given it credit for.

Sometimes even reading a poem aloud isn’t enough- sometimes you have to hear it being read, ideally by the poet. I had a little trouble reading Dylan Thomas’s poem Do not go gentle into that good night for myself, but many are the blessings of the Internet, for soon I found a sound clip of Dylan Thomas reading it  . I was quietly amazed.

Rhythm helps a poem to stay alive beyond the convention of form or rhyme. It makes the piece flow, brings a narrative to life. This can be achieved through blank verse (in English poetry usually in iambic pentameter) or a different type of meter. As seen in the more traditional ballads, it can even be achieved by using different kinds of meter within the same poem.

Ultimately, rhythm relies on patterns. These patterns can be made clearer by use of things like rhyme and meter, and like any other pattern it sometimes works best if it is occasionally broken. Very few, if any, poets write poetry in iambic pentameter with fully perfect iambic feet, and those who may manage this admirable feat might not necessarily be the most interesting ones to read.


Penultimate topic, at a WDC blog outlet near you tomorrow: Shape.
 

Rhyme
Geoffrey Chaucer is said to have despised of alliteration and favoured rhyme of the final syllable(s). Alliteration had gone somewhat out of fashion along with the oral tradition once literacy started becoming a symbol of status. This makes sense in an era where mnemonic devices weren’t as necessary because everything could be written down, and Chaucer’s desire to be distinguished as a literate poet rather than one of the oral tradition is not entirely incomprehensible.

Someone once told me that a poem wasn’t a poem if it didn’t rhyme. I’m not sure where this idea originated (with Chaucer, perhaps?), but anyone who knows a little more poetry than the odd snippet of nursery rhyme would know that this definition of poetry doesn’t do the genre any justice- it certainly isn’t true!

What about, say, blank verse? Or the haiku? Do those suddenly no longer count in the world of poetry? That doesn’t really seem fair. Poetry is about the arranging of words, but there are no real rules about how they should be arranged. The sheer number of forms of poetry should be ample evidence, as well as the many existing poetic devices a poet may employ within a poem.

Rhyme is more than just similar-sounding syllables at the end of a line. While the most recognised form of rhyme remains tail rhyme, there are many other forms of rhyme around. Rhyme, earlier spelling rime, finds its origins in Old Frankish *rīm, meaning as much as series or sequence. In a broader sense, it denotes a (recurring) pattern.

That pattern may just as well be alliteration, or assonance, or consonance. It can be half rhyme, forced rhyme, internal rhyme, imperfect rhyme, or even eye rhyme. It doesn’t need to sound alike, it may only look alike. (There are a good number of examples of this to be found in Early Modern English poetry, although at the time they were written they may well have sounded alike.)

So, when someone goes and says that poetry has to rhyme, the fairest question to ask them may well be: what kind?


Tomorrow's topic: Rhythm.
 

Punctuation
Someone recently commented on one of my poems: I think you should add punctuation. As someone who takes advice from fellow writers very seriously, this made me look at the poem again and consider. In the end, I decided against it.

The tricky part about punctuation is that there is no 100% right or wrong in it. Never mind what your English teacher once tried to convince you of, there is no true consensus among linguists about how to punctuate correctly. What is taught in schools is part convention and part personal preference.

Punctuation is tricky enough for normal texts, but once it gets to poetry it goes into a certain grey area that may as well be described as entirely optional. Some poets punctuate each line as carefully as they would a sentence in a story, others seem not to be aware of the existence of something such as a full stop at all.

For me, punctuation is a poetic device. It can be employed much the same way as one might employ a certain form, rhyme scheme or meter. It can be consciously employed to create a rhythm or break it (consider the use of the comma to mark a caesura, for instance). In the same way, it can be consciously left out.

I have used punctuation before in a pattern not unlike a rhyme scheme, most notably in "There is a road" . At the same time, "In Dreams"  has no more punctuation than a capital letter at the start of each stanza. In both cases the decision to punctuate a certain way was entirely deliberate.

Personally I will rarely, if ever, comment on punctuation in poetry, unless I have the impression that the poet might not have intended the poem to look a certain way. If I do choose to comment, I’m more inclined to ask about the intention than anything else.

It is difficult to judge a poet’s use of punctuation based on a single poem. The presence of a pattern in several poems can tell you a lot about the poet’s preferred style, but the absence of a pattern to link all the poems can tell you more about the individual poems, and sometimes adds another layer of meaning.


Tomorrow's topic: Rhyme.
 

A little past midnight today... oh well, better luck tonight I suppose.


Placement
This may not be something many poets really consider, but a poem’s placement on a page (digital or physical) can be as important as the actual choice of words. In this same way, the position of individual words within a poem can underline (or undermine) the message a poet might be trying to convey.

If that first paragraph sounded like confusing gibberish, try Googling the Flemish poet Paul van Ostaijen. His poetry might not be written in a language most people here are familiar with (I’m not aware of any Dutch language people here at WDC), but even if the words don’t mean much, the look of his poems has a lot to say.

Unfortunately his poems work better in print than online, because the Internet doesn’t offer too many options for that kind of placement. Browsers and programming languages are a little too rigid for it, so the only real way to show a poem like that is in image form.

Van Ostaijen used a lot of interesting devices in his poetry: different font types, different font sizes, and placement beyond a standard type of stanza. In some cases, he breaks up words into individual letters that cascade down the page, or words are printed diagonally. Never even mind his use of punctuation.

It might seem a little too contrived for some people, but it does add a certain impact to a poem. Consider an onomatopoeic word like boom, and then ask yourself what would be the most effective way of displaying this word.

BOOM

or the perhaps more comic book approach of

BOOM

The latter has a certain way of underlining the onomatopoeic quality of the word and stresses its meaning.

While I'm not the greatest fan of Van Ostaijen's work, it did get me thinking about how I display my own poetry, and it's made me play around with words in a way that I may otherwise never have considered. "There is a road"  and Danse Macabre, the introductory poem to "Maison Diable" , both have a little bit of this playfulness worked into them.
 

Meaning
Perhaps the most tricky aspect of poetry is meaning. I’ve already covered "Author vs. Narrator"  in an earlier blog post so I will not go into that, but there is plenty of ground still to cover.

So if we take away the personal aspect from this topic, what are we left with to consider? Layers of meaning, direct references, allusions, and choice of words. Metaphors and similes play a large role in this: they can flower up and prettify a poem, but they can as easily add a whole new layer of meaning (or two, or three) to the poem. Metaphysical poets like John Donne and George Herbert have a lot of interesting examples to offer.

A lot of poetry features direct references of some sort to other poetry or the world beyond poetry. Some poets reference other poets, but this only works well if the poet or poem referred to is well-known enough for the new piece to be understandable. Just about anyone would recognise the reference if a poet used Shall I compare thee... somehow, but not every poem is that well-remembered.

Consider Sir Walter Raleigh’s poem The Nymph’s Reply to the Shepherd. While not a bad or uninteresting poem on its own, it loses half its purpose without the poem it is meant to reply to: Christopher Marlowe’s The Passionate Shepherd to His Love. Raleigh’s poem worked well enough at the time, but how many people now are still familiar with Marlowe’s work and would recognise Raleigh’s reference without someone pointing it out to them?

This is important to remember when working in, say, pop culture references to add more layers of meaning. Not everything lasts, and while Batman and 9/11 are things people will likely still be familiar with two decades from now, there are plenty of things that are huge now but might well be forgotten in a few years. If a reference is likely to become obscure, how useful is it as a poetic device?

Biblical and classical references are a little safer for a poet, although even those are slowly becoming more obscure. Plenty of people will still hear a bell ringing at the mention of the name Jesus, but Cain and Abel are a little further away in terms of familiarity. And when it comes to the classics, how many people are still familiar with, say, the Rape of Persephone?

Perhaps I just like being difficult, but I really enjoy making references. Dropping names is a pretty efficient and direct way of doing this (Judas Iscariot in "Love Song for Judas" , for instance), but I can also have a lot of fun with more indirect allusions, like the hunter and the laurel tree in "The Laurel Tree" . For those who really pay close attention to allusions, there’s food for thought in the phrase And you, my Brutus (Love Song for Judas), because it refers to several things at once- two people, one event, and a famous quote. All that in four words!

But choice of words can be more than just a reference or allusion. It can be a choice of word for the sake of a word. When running into words or terms that seem out of place, consider not just their contemporary or most common meaning, but the full meaning of the word. That means the full contemporary definition, but also more obscure but still extant meanings of the word, or even meanings of the word that have become all but extinct outside of etymological dictionaries.

Something that seems like gibberish may well make a lot of sense, and you don’t need to look for big or complex words to find ambiguity. The word sinister has a few diverse meanings (originally marked with differing pronunciation), but even the word nice is not what it seems! Suddenly the possibilities are endless... is it any wonder that people in literature classes have difficulty agreeing on the topic of meaning?

My own poem "Goodbye"  features a very conscious paradox based on the meaning of words. While it is by no means the only one I’ve used, it is perhaps the most interesting to consider. What does light year literally mean?
 

I've been meaning to do this for some time, but circumstance got in the way. I'll be posting a sort of essay on poetry here in a series of 8 topics. I'm starting tonight and I'll be adding a part every night until the work is complete. It's mostly observations I've made throughout my studies, but also things I've noticed by browsing through the work of fellow writers in online writing communities. I hope that in sharing this, I might impart some of my knowledge to others and provide them with valuable insights that might help their own writing. At the very least, I hope that people feel inspired, and encouraged to read the works of people they might never have read otherwise. If nothing else, I hope it may give people some insight into my own approach to poetry- how I read it, and how I write it.

So, introducing the first topic in the series:

Form
Forms of poetry can be both immensely confining and incredibly liberating. Sitting down to write a sonnet may at first seem limiting, but the form has more wriggle room than one might think. A poet is not restricted to the sonnet as made famous by Italian poet Francesco Petrarca (Petrarch), nor even to the form immortalised by William Shakespeare. Consider the works of Edmund Spencer, Sir Philip Sidney, or even Dante Alighieri. There is plenty of wriggle room when it comes to rhyme scheme, division of stanzas, and meter.

The choice of a particular type of poem does tend to fence in the topic of a poem. Sonnets are often about love, while haikus traditionally involve some kind of seasonal reference. A pre-existing form dictates adherence to a certain rule set to really make it work as intended. Deviating from an existing pattern can offer a fresh new perspective, or create something entirely satirical. How seriously does one take a ballad about a deceased hamster?

There is also deviation within a poem to consider. If a poem is written entirely in tercets or quatrains, then the appearance of for instance a heroic couplet might seem a little out of place. This can be a useful way of drawing attention to that particular part of a poem; breaking the pattern can be used as a means to show that something about the poem’s topic is fundamentally broken.

And there is absolutely no reason why someone can’t go and put a new form together or write lines at will and see how they come together. Poetry is as diverse as a poet makes it. Crimson Roses, a poem I haven’t published at WDC, is one of my more experimental poems in terms of form: it starts with a quatrain, moves on to a tercet, passes through a couplet and ends in a single line.


Tomorrow's topic: Meaning.
 

So NaNoWriMo has come to an end and I didn't participate. I've thought about it, of course, and I've written a good number of words on various bits and bobs, but I just could not find the right kind of energy I need to dedicate myself to a single big project that NaNo dictates. How do I feel now that NaNo has come and gone? Strangely calm. I have other things on my mind. Perhaps, on an emotional level, I shouldn't try to commit to more things that will be emotionally taxing (and NaNo sure is!). There is such a thing as too much at once, and I suppose that this year at least NaNo would have been that one last straw that confounded the camel...

I hope to be looking back some time in October 2010 and feel that all this is behind me. Feel more at peace, or at least less distressed. Maybe then I will look ahead to November and think "hey, you know what? I can do this NaNo thing". And even if I fail, it won't be so bad, because I had the energy to do it.


And to all you NaNo winners- congrats! When you finish the infernal process of editing your NaNoSpawn, do post a bit and share the results. :)
 

I'm a perfectionist. I think I need an OFF switch. Am I the only person who can't read back her own stuff without cringing at her little typographical trip-ups and other such grammar-abusing oversights? Or the only person who thinks that punctuation is as good as sacred and that people should learn to, oh, use it?

I might be some kind of freak, but as a linguist I can't help going into Phase Red when I see people who are apparently oblivious to the fact that "its" is not the same as "it's" (and other such enlightened errors). At those times, I really need to learn to get away from my keyboard really quickly, and maybe not touch it again for half an hour or so.

Never even mind when my keyboard goes rogue on me and eats my own apostrophes, or when I pen things down so fast that entire words disappear- or are awkwardly linked together! It's so tempting to just chew on the paper and make all the evidence of being a complete scatterbrain just go away. I know better than that, dangit!


Breathe, Elv. Remember to breathe. :)
 

I really have the most epic conversations sometimes.

It makes me wish I had a story to put them into, because they're too good not to be used. Unfortunately the original context is usually hardly any kind of suitable for it (my conversations are often fast-paced, multi-topical and extremely random). Just because some of this is too good not to share, though, I thought I'd just post it here to share with the world for some cheap giggles.

Woman time!
Elv: I swear, I have a fat, flabby belly and a huge ass.
Liz: Hello?! Have you looked into the mirror lately?!
Elv: I have! That's how I know I have a fat, flabby belly and a huge ass!

Company email etiquette...
Elv: I had about 200 emails to go through when I came into the office this morning, and sadly none of it was spam. Most of it started with FYI, FYA, or FYR. I wanted to reply with just FY.


I'm sarcastic and cynical... but I like to think that makes me awesome. ;)
 

Making a wish is an act of desperation. Wishing is what we do when we lose all hope. Wishing is asking for a miracle. Begging, pleading, praying for something to come along that makes the impossible possible; something that makes the world stop, about-face, and head in the opposite direction. It's seeing a shooting star and wondering if maybe real life could be a stage, and if so, could we please get a deus ex machina to sort everything out for us?

Hope is something intangible, incomprehensible. It is treacherous, but it can be comforting. I have sat and awaited the inevitable, just sat still and faced it. I have often listened to bad knews that I had seen coming from miles away. I have listened to things I had no less than fully expected. Despite all that, even though I always knew, I also always hoped. I hoped I'd be wrong. I hoped something else would happen. I hoped for the unforeseen.

But sometimes, just sometimes, even that faintest glimmer of hope escapes us, and when that happens there is nothing left but wishes. I wish I had hope.
 

Maybe it's me, or my insufferable perfectionism, but WB has once again reared its ugly head. I've been working on "Great Arcana"  (The Hanged Man and The World), but I can't get more than half a page's worth of drivel in at any point to get my stuff going. I gave up on The Lovers after a whopping 3(!) lines and even The Tower has proved to be unyielding. Most vexing.

Perhaps I have a few too many ideas in my head all at once. Perhaps I'm trying too hard to avoid linking the stories too closely to The Ivory Tower, my unfinished and unpublished novel set in the same universe. I'd like to avoid the stories becoming incomprehensible without having read anything from the novel. I still want them to be short, stand-alone things.

Somehow, though, I can't help ideas popping up into my head about how I could work the 22 cards into a single narrative. It's frustrating and I'm ready to take my notebooks and use them for BBQ fuel. (Not that I ever eat anything remotely meaty but I'm sure my housemates wouldn't mind the free pyro-fodder.)



Suppose I should divert my attention to a different project for a while. "Maison Diable"  is a little neglected (publishing-wise anyway, I have in fact written on it) and I still owe Monsieur du Lac a poem. Food for thought?
 

One of the most frustrating things to run into, I find, is to get a review from someone who cannot distinguish the writer of a story or a poem from the narrator of the aforementioned. I realise that it can be tricky, but one of the first things I was taught at Uni when I started getting into literature was never to confuse the two, and, more importantly- never to assume that the writer is the speaker. It can be interesting, of course, to consider the possibility that, say, Sir Thomas Wyatt the Elder wrote his poetry based entirely on personal experience, but it would be a grave mistake and would certainly not do his work much justice even if it does seem to fit. (Often overlooked fact: many of his sonnets were actually translations of Petrarch's works!)

I personally get annoyed when these things happen, and sadly enough, they happen all too often. In fact, I don't think I've written a single poem that hasn't been mistaken for my own personal story at some point or other. While it is certainly true that every writer eventually uses some personal experience to write something, that does not mean that everything they write is necessarily about them. Often it is much more abstract, a touch of reality to breathe life into a story otherwise entirely made up. Let's face it, when we want to write believably, we draw on real life experience to add colour to our verbal paintings.

So why is it that, even though deep down we all know this, whenever we find something that is written very evocatively, we end up assuming that it must have been reality for the writer? Sure, sometimes that's true. Writing can be a very powerful tool, and can make for pretty effective therapy... but we're not all in therapy! (Right? >.>)

I guess it sometimes bothers me that often enough people manage to completely miss the point... by miles and miles. A lot of literature references other works, often the Bible or classics from Homer and Ovid to somewhat more recent works like Dante's Divina Commedia. I learned very quickly that in order to understand the subject matter of my studies properly, I needed the immense amount of background knowledge which I was fortunate enough to have acquired before ever even going to Uni in the first place. (Many of my fellow students were not that lucky.)

I find myself following that trend somehow. Sometimes I just write whatever pops into my head at any given time (on a train, while strolling in the forest), and sometimes I write about some issue or other I read about; social commentaries wrapped up in a mythological fabric. Crucially, though, you need to know your classics to understand poems that draw heavily on said classics.


The Laurel Tree is an intense poem however you interpret it, but you won't really get the imagery unless you know the myth of Daphne and Apollo, and you'll probably miss what the real issue is unless you also know the story of Lucretia. True, not everyone will be equally well-read, but I like to think that people are not too lazy to wiki a name if they see it referenced in a poem. It takes, what, a whole 10 seconds? Heck, I find that when a writer drops a name, they're dropping clues, and my inner detective must investigate. (Something about a dog and the night time...)

So, even though I know that I may not be the easiest writer out here, and may be a little hard to interpret, I still get annoyed when I get unhelpful reviews like "it's good to channel your pain into a tree metaphor". I'm sure it's well meant, but... no. Just no. :)