Poetry for Prose Writers -- Get Your Regular Dose

Until about 8 years ago, contemporary poetry seemed alien to me; in some vague way, I used to think either I was too unimaginative to understand it, or those who wrote it were uninterested in having anyone who is not also a modern poet comprehend its meaning.

Then I enrolled in an MFA program and that was the end of that. Even those in the creative nonfiction track like me were rubbing up against poets all the time. Eventually, I sat in on more than the polite number of poetry seminars. I discovered poetry that relies on the narrative line, prose poems, and – biggest head-thumping moment of all – that not only might I like to write some, but that a poem may be the best exercise of all for a prose writer. This came clear to me in a workshop my final week, led by a poet, with an even mix of nonfiction writers and poets around the table.

In the last five years, I've developed the habit of purposefully reading several new poems each week (I try for one each day but don't always manage it). Some stumble into my path, which is easy enough to understand: I now have many poet friends, whose work is regularly getting posted, published, praised, and passed around. I watch for new work by poets whose material I was first exposed to in the MFA program, and later via my expanding circle of (all kinds of) writing colleagues, and try to catch up on their older works too.

Like several mentors and workshop leaders I've studied under, when I began teaching and leading workshops, I adopted the ritual of beginning each session by reading a poem aloud. I ask those gathered (usually all prose writers) for a bit of forbearance, and to first simply listen as I read. Then, I pass around copies and ask someone else to read it aloud again. Sometimes we're lucky to have someone in the room who also writes poetry, and knows far more than I about the art of reading poetry aloud.

Then we talk about it – just for a few minutes. Whatever comes to mind. The language, word choices, images. Rhythm, intent, what's purposely left out. The lyricism, the music. How does it make you feel?

I'm not suggesting to the writers at the table that they write poetry, or mandating that they read more than this one poem each week. Aside from learning to appreciate another form of written art, mostly I do it because the writers who've gathered have typically just arrived from the busyness of their non-writing lives -- jobs, families, chores, traffic, noise, ice or heat or bad news on the car radio -- and I want to create a transition moment, a specific line where we cross from that over-stimulated, fast-spinning world into the land of words, language, art on the page.

I can tell that some folks only tolerate this 3-4 minute interlude; they want to get on to the real business at hand. That's okay. Because once in a while, something else happens, something terrific. Like the other night, in a Memoir & Personal Essay class, when we read Gretchen Marquette's poem,"Ode to a Man in Dress Clothes" (originally published in the Paris Review, though I discovered it republished in Harper's) which has an uncanny resemblance to creative nonfiction. 

After we'd read it twice and talked briefly about the images, the writer's possible invocation of memory; about tone, and how the second half of the poem differs dramatically from the first half in form, pace, and rhythm, one of the woman at the table smiled and reported: Wow. I used to think I didn't like poetry at all. I used to think it was so dense and odd. But I now I like it.

That is all.

Photo: torbakhopper/Flickr Creative Commons

Writing Quirks and Bad Habits

Writing quirks. We all have them. Sometimes a writing quirk is just a bad habit, one we should take extra care to extinguish – or at minimum become acutely aware of and question ourselves about. For me, one of my quirks is a tendency to get list-y: "Hello my name is Lisa and I am a serial comma and semi-colon abuser." Another I've mostly eradicated from my prose is the one-word paragraph comprised of the word still or yet.

Over the last few months I've advised students, editing clients and writers I coach about their individual writing quirks. A few involved dialogue tags: One writer loved adverbs (Bob said heartily), another seemed unable to use the verbs said or asked (Mary enthused; he entreated), and a third writer combined both (Sue heartily enthused; Joe entreated smugly).

Other bad habits I've seen recently include memoir writers beginning nearly every sentence with the pronoun "I"; overuse of one particular favorite (usually hackneyed) phrase ("and so with that," "not that it mattered"); starting a new paragraph every few sentences whether it makes sense or not; continually referring to an important secondary character in terms of their relationship to the main character rather than by name ("my mom" instead of Mother, Mama, Mom; "her brother" rather than Joe); and – one of my particular favorites – repeatedly using the exact same word or descriptor for an item that is central to the story ("the red dress" 10 times in one page; if it's not to make a poetic point, couldn't that item at least once or twice, be a frock, outfit, garment, piece of clothing, silky confection, or depending on its design, a sheath, gown, sundress, cocktail dress?).

Oh dear. Was that list-y of me?

Some writers are so overly enamored of a single word, they will find ways to use it far too many times in one piece; a few recent ones I've encountered: superior, blanch, quibble, obstreperous.

Then there's "it".

I once challenged a writer to do a spell check and count how many times he used it in a 1200 word essay. Answer: 46. My pet peeve with *it* is that very often the reader won't immediately know what *it* refers to precisely; or the meaning shifts, from one *it* to the next; and more importantly, that using *it* substitutes for bringing readers closer in to the story and further inside a character's head.

Example: It was a glorious day so John called in sick even though it would get him in trouble. It didn't matter. He'd already decided that it was no longer worth it. Fix: Monday morning's glorious sunrise convinced John to call in sick. He knew Mr. Morgan would make a negative note in his performance review folder, but that didn't matter. By then, John had decided he'd been humiliated by a demeaning job long enough and would no longer worry about the consequences.

Many writing quirks can be solved by awareness and practice with alternate ways of expressing ourselves. Sometimes I challenge a writer to produce something without a single adverb, or using only said or asked, or writing sentences longer than five words, or never longer than 12 words. Once, I limited a memoir writer to no more than three uses of *I* per page.

As for me, when I revise I am keenly aware of my terrible friend the serial comma and my tendency to want to list things. An instructor once told me: periods are free and for a while I kept a sticky note on my computer with that written on it.

Another way to kill your quirks is by constantly striving to be more precise, because many bad habits have to do with avoiding precision. Unless we are being purposely imprecise or ambiguous for metaphorical, style or poetic reasons, we need to work hard to help a reader see and understand our exact, specific, precise meaning.

Yet.

Some writing quirks are actually good habits, just gone a little (or a lot) awry. Think of the writer who is a master of interesting description: Terrific when we're reading about the main character's new house, or the place he's traveled, or the office she's coveted and is now hers; maybe not so great when we're asked (for no reason related to plot or character development) to read paragraphs of description of a pot, blouse or pencil.

One writer I worked with wrote stunning dialogue. But not every story she wanted to tell could be done best via conversation. Another created richly innovative metaphors; but after reading five in a row in a single paragraph, fatigue set in (for me at least). One writer whose work I otherwise particularly liked, took too much to heart the typically good advice about ending a paragraph with a striking or powerful image or word, and began ending every paragraph with a word that sent me running to the dictionary.

I would continue, but that might be list-y of me.

Still.

Friday Fridge Clean-Out: Links for Writers, June 17, 2011 Edition

►Like to muck around with metaphor? Head over to The Economist magazine's language blog for some news, and further links. (Who knew The Economist had a Language blog, huh?)

►What are you writing? Do you know what it's going to be, when you first start on a new piece? Short story? Poem? Novel? Personal narrative? Erika Dreifus considers.

►A few times a year, for six weeks or so, I send out daily writing prompts, and while that program is on hiatus for now, I found this great resource where creative writers can get a prompt fix.

►If you haven't already read Dani Shapiro's brilliant essay in n+1 about the intersection of her writing life and internet distraction, then you haven't….well gee, maybe you've been writing and not been sufficiently distracted on the internet.

►I should no longer be shocked by tales told by former web content slaves. But I'm still disturbed, mostly by statements like this, which I think are mostly, and sadly, true: "The Internet has created more readers than ever before in the history of the world. And yet, perversely, the actual writer is more undervalued than ever before. .. In the age of Internet news, Google 'keywords' matter…Regular old words, not so much."

►Let's see if I can write the following sentence without smirking. James Franco is busy doing The Thing. Not that thing. This thing – The Thing – is a sort-of "quarterly publication". Take a look and decide for yourself.

►The Writer Magazine is now available on Nook and via an iPad app.

►Not every author can go this far, but when the last independent bookstore in her area closed, novelist Anne Patchett had enough, and announced plans to open one herself.

►Poetry. Songwriting. One late summer week. The Cotwsolds region of England. Paul Muldoon. The home and gardens of T.S. Elliot. Enticing, no?

►Finally, do some folks take The Onion seriously? Apparently they do, and then post their hilariously inappropriate responses. (hat tip RexBlog)

Have a great weekend!

Don't write for geniuses. Write for readers.

I like a reading challenge once in a while. And I like helping my kids (a little) with their English, writing, reading and literature assignments. But I wasn't prepared for this.

My high school sophomore asked me to read – or more precisely, to help him comprehend -- a 10-page scholarly literary essay he was assigned to read about The Catcher in the Rye. I barely made it through three pages. In those first three pages, I found nearly a dozen words I have never seen. That’s okay, I enjoy learning new words. But what bothered me was that I couldn’t even begin to guess at their meaning – not even a little bit from context, and not from the word itself, not a clue, not even a hint of a common Latin root.

The author had also included no less than 10 literary, film and cultural references in those three pages – I knew and could explain only five, and the other five had us running to the dictionary, the web and my 84-year-old mother who knows the complete script of most 1940s movies. Don’t get me started on the overlong sentence lengths and foreign spellings. And did I mention the proliferation of dashes, colons, semi-colons, and parentheses?

In between all of this scurrying about, scratching our heads and sighs of frustration, I wondered: what was the writer thinking? When a piece of writing – especially one which is supposed to help shed light on something, to help people understand a text which may be confusing -- is itself so obscure, so overwrought with $25 words, so clearly intended to showcase nothing but the writer’s overinflated sense of superiority, then who is it serving? Certainly not the reader. My son told me his chemistry teacher once said: The only reason to design a test a genius can’t pass is to prove you can design a test that a genius can’t pass. Or, as Holden might have put it: "What a phony."

Writers, let’s all take note and vow to keep it simple. Or at least comprehensible.

When Metaphors Run Amok

A while back, when I was moving from journalism and public relations writing to creative nonfiction, I was worried that I was not handy enough with metaphor, with imagery, with a dozen other literary devices utilized, and expected, in more literary work.
I did learn.
Still, in the back of my head is always a journalism-based sensibility. I ask myself if a fact-based description can do the job, and if the answer is yes, I try not to deploy anything more. Can a sensitive but literal passage about say, an older-than-average father and his keen but unathletic son discussing baseball strategy in a dugout, really be improved upon by describing the scene with a suggestion of a decorated field general advising a scared new recruit in a foxhole? Often, the answer is no.

Following the excellent suggestion of a former writing mentor, I question every use of a metaphor or suggestive image, each simile and allegory, all the crafty doo-dads I sometimes tend to throw into a first draft and ask, is this really necessary? Does it add to the pleasure of reading, or simply strive to impress the reader, even slow down the flow because it asks the reader to do a little too much in the way of mental gymnastics? Is it original?

I think this serves me well. Yes, I do kill a lot of “little darlings.” Good riddance.

I’m reminded of this because occasionally I read something – an essay or an entire book -- which suggests that it may have first come to life as an assignment in a writing craft class in which students practice their skill with metaphor and imagery, by over-exaggerating.

A novel I read the other day was just this kind of book. Although by the half-way mark I wanted to toss it on the floor and cry Uncle!, it was in fact a terrific story, with rich characters, percolating dialogue, a sense of urgency. Still, I couldn’t help but feel that the author’s constant use of metaphor and imagery – new ones seemed to sprout in every paragraph – was getting in the way. I found myself not fully engaged in what was happening, because instead I was watching for how the author was going to describe it. And, being annoyed that this was overshadowing the experience of the book.

Something else too. Getting through this book made me feel like a terrible reader -- not intelligent enough, creative enough, imaginative enough, not literary enough. It was as if the author was saying, in almost every other sentence: see if you can keep up with my writerly prowess.

I’m not an expert of course in how and when and why to use metaphor and its literary cousins. I suppose the answer is different for each piece of writing. I do know, however, when I reach the saturation point as a reader. Or, was I just was not the “right” reader for this particular book?

I know there are ultra literary novels, even experimental ones, in which the writing matters more than the story -- craft above context -- and it may be that I simply don’t have the patience for them. But this book didn’t feel that way; it felt like a novel trying to tell its story in spite of what on the surface appears to be inspired writing.

If nothing else, however, this reading experience served as a potent reminder to me about the fine lines which exist in a piece of writing, separating something terrific when done in moderation, and – as my mother used to say – too much of a good thing.

Writing in Text

A little linguistic fun for a dull grey day.

I don't pretend to know all the abbreviations, acronyms, and other texting tricks, but I can get my digital point across. Deciphering what others write in a text is not always so simple, though maybe writers have an edge when trying to puzzle it all out.

Need some practice? Try this, from McSweeneys: God Texts the Ten Commandments by Jamie Quatro.