From: marek@casbah.acns.nwu.edu (Marek Lugowski)
Subject: Re: why Instead is bad writing / Marek
Organization: Northwestern University, Evanston Illinois.
Date: Thu, 7 Jan 1993 08:35:25 GMT

[content: writing in style, not hoping to annoy]

>>              Instead of Growing Old With You
>>              ----------------------------------------------
>>
>>              I wish my lips to touch your eye
>>              Where flowers I placed in your hair
>>              Who bargain for shadows that lie
>>              On your face would not their darkness dare.

Specifics?  Here:

1.  "darkness" -- Really?  Truly?  Is the shadowed person in harsh light?
Possibly on the moon?  In space?  whatever happened to the softness due to
ambient light?  What is the approximate albedo of a softly shadowed skin
(i.e.  with a flower or two vs. a mine shaft)? is it close to 0, i.e.
"darkness"?  Could we possibly be the recipients of "darkness dare" for the
cheap thrill of convenience/alliteration/sexiness of "darkness".  We all
know "darkly" is the sexiest extant poetic word yet, thus my line of
questioning....

2.  "who" -- Usually reserved for persons.  Are flowers persons?  I suppose
it helps to animate them; a form conceit?  After all, they must "dare".
Daring is another Monday Night Football sexy poetic word.  What do you get
when you put a cliche with a cliche?  a megacliche.  _Megacliches 2000:
power your poetry into the 17th century_.

3. "instead of growing old with you" -- What? You abandon me for a mere
moment of sticking a dead weed in my hair and slobbering over my blinded
eye (and mascara runs, you know!)???  Why did i marry you in the first
place?  I.e., is this poem even self-consistent in content?  Seems not.  It
tries to be so precious that it becomes a self-parody when you pull back
from the hole in the tree the tinkering with meter/rhyme/conceit bore to
apprehend the forest... 

4.  "kiss/eye/flowers/darkness/dare/bargain for ("both virgins did we buy,
we buy, we buy; god if I saw her now" -- Anthony Phillips)/hair/face/shadows"
 + others (nearly *every word in the poem*)
-- Hey!  Where is velvet and lace and wine and roses (never mind the condom
full of love (TM)).  Must we, must we, must we be subjected to this *stuff*?
How close to writing a new line of greeting cards do you want to get to, Don?
Couldn't we, couldn't we, oh couldn't we get the same conceit and zee art of
clockverk meter (great clockverk -- tells 5 timezones depending on how you
look at it; but what the hay, it's *nebulous*, mon, it's, like,
*am*big*uous*...) -- with, say, praying mantises (always thought they were
so cool and so coolly green), fresh dill, blacksmithing, and flutes.
Oh, and smudges of soot on warm warm, naked naked clavicles, please...

		-=-  -=  -==--=---=-- -  - ==- -==- ---

My objections center on the abuse of language on several levels at once in
order to accomplish some gymnastics.  Perhaps had the end result been less
unnatural or fresher my criticism would have been muted to the point of no
response or, gasp, favorable silence (learned this technique from a mutual
friend of Don and mine. :)).  Besides, it looked too damn cute and I had to
cry wolf to warn the impressionable youth of rap.  Smiling aside, on general
principle, I regard as kitsch any writing that unnaturally stretches the
language,or renders it canned, and, given a sufficient level of expected
skill on the part of the writer, fails to produce fucking amazing language
(notice the benign use of the verb to fuck).  Language is the means and the
end of writing.  Language is the canvas, the paint, the space, the
building, the reason, the perceptions, and the accounts receivable.

Fucking around (badass use of the verb to fuck) with rhymes, meter, rhythm,
punctuation, conceits, Shakespeare -- are possibly means, some of many, and
too often, sadly limiting in themselves, for weaving language.  Oh, and one
more thing: The old saw about "show, don't tell" is a newbie prescription.
Witness Marie's "Persephone" or any story told by a people (oral tradition)
to see it contradicted with spirit.  Storytelling is the root and the
horizon of poetry.  Even if you think yours is an evanescent Harvard Square
image, it is a story, situated in human spacetime, because on the receiving
end a human is taking it in and situating it, making sense of it -- or not,
which would be your fault whenever that happens, pal (meaning you, gentle
poet/reader, not Don in particular, though he is gently included).

obligatory :) for anyone in need.

				-- Marek

		-----=- = - =-- = -= -------   = -= ---------

...and here is the body of what i lanced, for your examination, take 2.

In article <407@uiunix.ui.org> donz@uiunix.ui.org (Don Zirilli) writes:
>In article <1993Jan6.070216.16577@news.acns.nwu.edu> marek@casbah.acns.nwu.edu (Marek Lugowski) writes:
>>
>>		    "She strove to use rhyme unexpectedly but
>>		always aptly.  Even the most unusual rhyme, she
>>		felt, must never obtrude on the sense of the
>>		line, nor must the normal word order, the easy
>>		tone of vernacular speech, be wrenched solely to
>>		save a rhyme."
>>
>>				-- Maxine Kummin on Anne Sexton
>>				   preface to _The Complete Poems_
>
>Let's break this down:
>
>What rhyme must not do:
>
>"obtrude on the sense of the line" - It's not the rhyme that obtrudes but 
>the style.  You can't make sense of it because you're not familiar with it,
>not because there's anything wrong with it.
>
>"normal word order" - it is normal word order for the style I'm using..
>
>"easy tone of vernacular speech" - that was Anne Sexton's choice for her 
>own poetry.  Surely she was not condemning Shakespeare and John Donne.
>
>
>And now a note on the "style" I mentioned.  It is more formal than
>conversation, but perfectly acceptable.  I can't guarantee that it is 
>free of awkwardness, but at the same time I will not concede to as broad
>a charge as you are implying.  My guess is that you wish to impose
>"vernacular speech" on every poet.  Such a restriction is ridiculous 
>(though I recommend it for poets who have no mastery of any other sort 
>of speech) as a universal axiom.
>
>
>Yours,
>Posthumous O'Toole
>Defender of the Realm
>
>-- 
>Chucklehead awaits the return of his .sig
>
>Aaron Radomski, where are you???