So there I am, reading my Amazon suggestions (as I'm wont to do, like browsing at Macy's but for books) and I read a recommendation for a book that I read, and really didn't quite like. Title: Almost Stopped Before I Started: So Glad I Didn't!.
I thought about that, why a person would recommend a book they almost didn't read. I remembered then that I almost didn't read Moby Dick again and am thrilled I did (and a little too self-satisfied about it, but I digress). So, for that moment, I was with her on that.
And then came the most insipid statement I think I've heard in all my years:
"I almost ruled out reading this book when I read the author's (to me) bold statement on page 225: "Can you write a poem in 20 minutes? We seriously doubt it."
And she follows with:
"Being, at times, a very fast poet, I *gasped* when I read that assertion!"
Well, la-ti-fucking-da.
Then I thought about that statement for a moment. And my anger bore an increase that forced me to take this down so that no one else may suffer confusion:
You don't write a poem in 20 minutes. Not even a fucking haiku.
This is something about which I am intimately familiar, writing poetry and fiction as I do. I do this on a daily basis. I give these poems to other people so that they may find homes, and they do. So when I hear someone who writes WITHOUT intention (which is the only way a poem comes into being in under 20 minutes and will not bear revision), it first disorients me. I know many, many writers. I know fiction writers who take a week soothing the syntax of a single sentence. I have spent a day musing on the effects of a comma. I have spent days translating the diction of a piece from one speaker to another. I have beat myself up over word choice. Wept under the tree of sonic beauty.
But that ire bore fruit: 1) A poem is a sibling to all the other poems you have ever written. It can be the deadbeat brother who dropped out of school and hasn't called unless he needed money or a place to crash, but brother nonetheless. Sometimes you're a bad parent, refusing to set good limits, letting the line run all around town. Sometimes you're abusive and constrict the language to the point of breaking. (For the record, I do not have this sort of brother. But I hear that these sorts of brothers exist and that makes it a ripe and apt metaphor.)
And now the corollary of this thought: you have been writing the poem you're writing all your life. Its appearance is no accident and is the result of every other linguistic complication and challenge you have tacked until this moment.
And then, a third rule: the trick of revision is not to find the answer to the issue you have begun to tackle in language. You must understand the question you are posing and let the poem phrase that question in the best way possible. I only say this because I lack faith in that we're ever going to get the answer, but at least to learn to ask better questions of language.
So, I guess, I should thank this chick and her ignorant rantings about her 20 minute poems... I think the theorems of composition that came into the world at my moment of indignation means that she was put on earth for a reason. If only that she may run across this post and understand that she is neverevereverever to say that kind of shit in public again.
PS. My roommate pointed out that maybe a poem COULD be written in 20 minutes not accounting for quality. But the very notion that quality is not taken into account is so foreign, so strange, so terrifying to me that I will post this regardless and pretend that all people want to write quality work. I do not want to live in a word that crap is analogous to poem. That's another post altogether. Don't even get me started.
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Show us your good luck charm.
I read this question, and realised I don't have a good luck charm.
I had a rabbit foot, once, on a key ring. It lasted about three months before I lost the key ring - and all the keys to the office. Luckily, the guys who tried to burgle the place waited 24 hours, so all the locks were changed.
After that, I sorta stopped bothering.
What were you afraid of when you were younger that seems silly to you now?
Submitted by wandie
I've always been a bad sleeper - god bless my parents for putting up with me as a kid who didn't really sleep. Plus, my mom says the dog used to come wake them up whenever I was up, so they probably suffered more than I did.
What used to scare me in my sleep was this loud "ka thunk ka thunk" noise that I thought was a bunch of military shells going off. (We lived right by an Army base, so this wasn't as far-fetched as it sounds.) It took me YEARS to ignore it, and even longer to figure out that the sound was my own heartbeat, which only got louder the more I held my ears.
And I still don't sleep all that well.
I have been waiting for this to come out in paperback since I read the last one. And was it worth the wait, I hear you ask. Most definitely.
I did have problems with remembering who was who, who hated who, and why some things happened. Partly because this book is big in scope and has many characters to keep track of, partly because I read a lot and I have decided no back-tracking on trilogies any more - I shall re-read them when they are finished and not before. Makes for interesting times, folks, I tell ya. Even Harry Potter had things in I was going What? When did that… So did this book.
Buy it, beg it, borrow it - do not steal it - but read it. A fantasy which is different is a fantasy to be treasured.
From the cover: Lord Bahl is dead and Isak, the young white-eye, stands in his place. Less than a year after being plucked from obscurity and poverty the charismatic new Lord of the Farlan finds himself unprepared to deal with the attempt on his life that now spells war and the possibility of rebellion waiting for him at home.
Now the eyes of the Land turn to the minor city of Scree, which could soon be obliterated as the new Lord of the Farlan flexes his power. Scree is suffering under an unnatural summer drought and surrounded by volatile mercenary armies that me be its only salvation.
It’s a strange sanctuary for a fugitive abbot to flee to - but he is only the first of many to be drawn there. Kings and princes, lords and monsters; all walk the sun-scorched streets while actors perform cruel and subversive plays that work their way into the hearts of the audience. The city begins to tear itself apart.
There is a malevolent will at work in Scree, one that has a lesson for the entire Land: nations can be manipulated, prophesises perverted and Gods denied, for nothing lies beyond the reach of a shadow.
Highly recommended.
Darkchild tells of Khira, a palace daughter, left alone in her mother's castle for the winter. She hears breaking glass and feels the terrible cold, and finds Darkchild behind the locked door. He knows nothing, and Khira has to teach him. He will bring terrible danger to Khira's world, and only together will they survive.
Bluesong tells of a different set of children in the deserts of Khira's world, fighting for the survival of themselves and a people who are fractured and violent, but who are learning, slowly, to co-operate and be better than they were.
And Starsilk tells of a search for a missing person, of some very strange aliens and allies, and how love and friendship can be shared.
Brilliant stuff. Recommended. You can pick these up on Amazon pretty cheap (I found that out when I was looking to sell mine - maybe I should replace my copy of Bluesong?)
This is the first novel McCaffrey wrote. Originally a Nebula-winning short story (or maybe the Hugo or maybe even both, I cannot be bothered to check right now!), this contains that novella as the first section, with the story expanded for the remainder of the book.
And I still love reading it. Gotta admit, after six or seven Pern books, she did rather lose her touch, but this, the first, is still by far the best. Only the Harper ones come close.
From the cover: the men who rode the dragons were a breed apart. Chosen when the dragons were first hatched, they became soul mates for life with the hug, magnificent beasts they controlled - the greens, blues, browns and bronzes - beautiful - terrible - the only creatures who could save Pern from the blood-red star.
But with the Queen the dragons would become extinct - only the gigantic, golden Queen could breed the new flights. And the Queen was fading… dying… leaving behind one last, huge, golden egg…
Recommended, with the caveat that it is a book of its age.
Oh, and on the cover it says this novel won both the Hugo and the Nebula. Pretty good going for a first novel in any field.