Cate wrote:okay you're teasing and joking with me,
No, not really. And if that's what you think I was doing,
and if you were to compare it to, say, doing the salchow,
then you'd have to wonder at someone like me
who can execute the move time and time again,
each time concluding with their skate in their mouth,
and pick myself up, shake off the cold shoulder,
and go back and try it again. And again and again and again.
But no. That is not what I was trying to do. And in fact
I never do tease or joke. Because I know I am very bad at it.
Whenever I try to do it, it's almost always mistaken
for an uncalled-for personal attack. So I try not to do it at all.
Which unfortunately doesn't mean that when I am trying
to do something else, it isn't also mistaken for an
uncalled-for personal attack.
But wait! That's not all! Buy now and we'll
throw in for free these two bits of gratuitous trivial
word play guaranteed to extend your pleasure
by seconds or your money back guaranteed!
That was me teasing myself.
(Which I
am very good at. If you ever wake up
with me in the morning, you'll see. Cf LC's
"Cover up your face with soap. /
There, now you're Santa Claus". Etc.)
(Or, if you knew anything about Gurdjieff,
then I'd say it was more like a product of self-remembering,
or self-observation, and not any kind of self-teasing or self-criticism
at all. And that's a very important distinction. But it's entirely
irrelevant here, so I won't go into it.)
But it was really an hypothesis about why I, (and not necessarily why you,)
too often write lines like "you can't believe how unbelievably believable this is."
Lines, in other words, like a bad movie actor who is always looking straight into
the camera and spoiling the spell. (Drawing attention to the language being used,
rather than simply using the language.) And I am very tired of myself doing it.
Because while it may be, (or at least while it may be intended to be,)
mildly amusing, it is really not the best way to express anything other
than that the author does not want to be taken too seriously.
Whereas, in truth, sometimes I do want to be taken seriously.
At this time in my life I am finding myself more and more
attracted to Kierkegaard's "Purity of Heart Is to Will One Thing."
(Which I may even read some day, instead of trying
to base my entire philosophy on the title alone.)
Or, as I put it to you before, "stand by your man.".
~~
More:
"My knees feel wobbly when you
when you ..." --- may have been unintended stuttering.
But stuttering would be expected from someone with
wobbly knees. So it would have been a good intended effect.
And more appropriate in the context than "believe how unbelievable"
was. The only problem with it, I thought, was that it would have been
the only such effect in the poem. And that it ran counter to the underlying
thrust of the rest of the poem, in so far as the poem has a confidence,
I think, that is much better to drive straight, without any artifice.
Of course you are still self-sabotaging your own poem with
"just being silly" in the title. And if you mean it ironically,
then ok. But as you yourself said -
ha! I'm poking fun a bit, because it's still fun to bug him.
but really it is very sexy to come home, after a night or two away,
to an already clean house
- much better then flowers btw.
In other words, you do know that what you're talking about
isn't silly at all. It is in fact, in one way or another, at the
foundation of every human relationship. Of every good
relationship. And of every divorce, for that matter.
(
Whenever a kid asked me how to seduce a girl,
(which was remarkably often -- considering! ...)
- about what kinds of lines to use, and what kinds
of gifts to give, - I always said the same thing:
Don't use any lines. And don't give arbitrary gifts.
Just try to be around her when she needs help.
And try to be helpful.
)
~~~
- nice poem.
no it's not, thank you though I just wanted to write something,
as I was stuck not writing the something I wanted to write.
...
yes it is.
And you should cherish the times you write something only
because you're stuck not writing the something that you thought
you wanted to write. This is a general principle of creativity.
As a friend of mine once said, our conscious minds are like
a child trying to be helpful, but just getting in the way.
And all you ever get from conscious frontal assaults
(the 99% perspiration) are
inventions. Whereas
when your conscious mind is fully engaged in that way
your subconscious mind is set free to give you
the real gifts (the 1% inspiration) of
discovery.
Unfortunately you really do have to distill
many tons of conscious pitchblende to get even
an ounce of unconscious radium. But the point is,
don't be afraid to throw out the slag.
It happens all the time. Someone writes a 500 page
dissertation, or 50000 lines of code, and it gets ruined
in the rain, or lost in a hard-drive crash. And they
despair. But if they pull themselves together long enough
to start over, it invariably happens that they wind up
writing a much better version. The point is, it took an
ouside force to make them give up their investment.
Likewise in the begining it takes a critic, a guru, a cold
external objective eye to tell us which lines need to be
crossed out, before we develope a good healthy habit
of doing it ourselves. The problem is always the same.
It's our attachment to our own lines. (The "ego" in our
poems, as I too often incorrectly call it.) We make a fetish
of our own lines, so that when someone tells us to cross
one out, we resent it, almost as much as if they had
asked us to cut off a limb. (Again, Cate, while I hope
this is helpful to you, I am really talking to myself.)
The best advise to give anyone who wants to write is:
1) Write a lot. 2) Cross out a lot.
Because that's a much more definite program
than "revise a lot". And if you want to know
how far along you are, then just take your temperature
when someone tells you to cross out a line.
If you can consider the suggestion without getting
any more angry than if you had made the suggestion
to yourself, then you are "there". (Which I am not, btw.
But I'm working on it.)
~~~
I want to play with and mix sounds, but every thing comes out puce.
Puce is the color I invented.
So if you're going to use it, you'll have to pay me royalties.
~~
You seem to have edited your post.
Which is very confusing to someone as slow as I am to respond.
But I remember you asked something about meter.
It did seem to me that your "when you / when you" "stuttering",
as you called it, had something to do with the meter, consciously or not.
In any case, to make your poem better now, you will have to work
a little more on the meter. But it's much harder to make suggestions
about that.
Hands down the best book on meter is Paul Fussell's little book:
"Poetic Meter & Poetic Form".
I leave you with a quote from it -
from Poetic Meter & Poetic Form - Paul Fussell, 1979,
pgs 100-101
The lust for rhythm is so universal in readers of poetry
that a poet can hardly be said to have a choice about
whether his poem shall be rhythmical or not: his only
choice is whether he is going to use meter well or ill,
efficiently or inefficiently. If he tries to write "without"
meter, it is certain that his readers are going to restore
meter to his poem, and, in the process, as I. A. Richards
has shown in
Practical Criticism, misread it.
Attempts to "escape" from meter - or at least some kind
of governing rhythm - are thus almost equivalent to attempts
to escape from poetry.
...
Here the price paid for the neglect of the metrical
dimension is severe, and it is a price exacted from
a great many contemporary poets whose devotion
to politics and revolutions, personal and social,
transcends their devotion to the art of poetry.
Many contemporary American poets have been tempted
to renounce rhythm on the grounds that, associated as it is
with the traditional usages of England and the Continent,
it is somehow un-American. And it is probably true that
the special tonalities of American idiom do require some
adjustments in traditional prosodic usages. Robert Frost
is one who has perceived that American idiom calls for
special metrical treatment, but in working out that treatment
he has adapted the proven expressive resources of English
prosody. The poet E. L. Mayo has appraised Frost's
achievement in embodying metrically the unique tone
of the American language. He writes:
Effective meter is closely bound up with the matter
of living idiom. ... Frost's line from "Birches,"
Kicking his way down through the air to the ground,
never fails to give me pleasure because it accommodates itself
so well to the purpose it serves in the poem (sudden activity
after inhibited movement) without violating American speech idiom
at any point. Some of the most casual and common idioms
of the language have strongly developed metrical elements;
for example:
I told him half a dozen times
Whether you like it or not
Is there any real reason why you can't?
(the list might be endlessly prolonged) and I conceive it the duty
of the poet who desires authenticity of sound and movement
to cultivate his ear, avail himself of these riches that lie so close
to hand whenever they serve his purpose. In this way his metrical
effects become more than merely personal; they become native.
He thus clothes his naked uniqueness (no fear - it will be civilized
and intensified, not smothered by the clothing) in the real spoken
language of the time.
