Oh, gosh, I get it. I can do it, too. My worst offence is an old Tolkien story, Rose Riddle, whose every line is loaded with allusions or puns or something, right down to the poor, innocent-looking bats and salamanders. Usually I try to keep a lid on it, because too much Cleverness gets in the way of Story, like too many nuts in a muffin gets in the way of chewing. But as a reader and a writer, I see every fractal and feel every tug of every little connecting thread. Every inconsistent metaphor. :P In undergrad English classes I was a close reading superstar, and later when profs started saying, "You picked it apart; that's very nice. SO WHAT?" I was quite taken aback. So now I'm always looking for the so what, and I can't write a story until I have one, which is annoying, because I have way more clever sentences than plots to put them in.
Hey! I like your poetry! I think I must not consider poetry and prose to be as discrete as other people seem to. They're all just words that say stuff. Poetry says stuff in fewer words.
Oh, I'd like to read that some day (Rose Riddle, I mean).
I do think that cleverness can get in the way of a story. But I think that sometimes the point of a story is the story, and sometimes the point of a story is the writing. I'm in the middle of Saul Bellow's Mr. Sammler's Planet right now, and it seems to me the point is absolutely what the author has to say and how it's said. It's not about the plot, which is barely there.
I mean, finding the "SO WHAT" is part of the fractal-pick-apart game. Finding out what it's all about, what the point of it is. I think the SO WHAT in my fic Down There In The Reeperbahn was that Angel's life is a crazy repeating pattern. And that's what the writing was. I'm not saying it was a perfect piece or that the writing perfectly illustrated that point, but the style of the piece was part of the point.
Thanks, I'm glad you like my poetry. I'm pleased every once in a while with poems that I write, but my problem is I can't force a poem. In prose I can eventually say everything I want to say; in poetry you have to leave so many things out. And while they're both just words that say stuff, poetry says far more in the spaces in between. The meter says stuff that sentence and paragraph spacing doesn't. There's a lot of power in the formatting you do with prose, the way you phrase things, Toni Morrison even sometimes leaves out spaces between words. But you still have far more power in poetry, even in structured verse.
Hey! I like your poetry! I think I must not consider poetry and prose to be as discrete as other people seem to. They're all just words that say stuff. Poetry says stuff in fewer words.
Reply
I do think that cleverness can get in the way of a story. But I think that sometimes the point of a story is the story, and sometimes the point of a story is the writing. I'm in the middle of Saul Bellow's Mr. Sammler's Planet right now, and it seems to me the point is absolutely what the author has to say and how it's said. It's not about the plot, which is barely there.
I mean, finding the "SO WHAT" is part of the fractal-pick-apart game. Finding out what it's all about, what the point of it is. I think the SO WHAT in my fic Down There In The Reeperbahn was that Angel's life is a crazy repeating pattern. And that's what the writing was. I'm not saying it was a perfect piece or that the writing perfectly illustrated that point, but the style of the piece was part of the point.
Thanks, I'm glad you like my poetry. I'm pleased every once in a while with poems that I write, but my problem is I can't force a poem. In prose I can eventually say everything I want to say; in poetry you have to leave so many things out. And while they're both just words that say stuff, poetry says far more in the spaces in between. The meter says stuff that sentence and paragraph spacing doesn't. There's a lot of power in the formatting you do with prose, the way you phrase things, Toni Morrison even sometimes leaves out spaces between words. But you still have far more power in poetry, even in structured verse.
Reply
Leave a comment