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
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