metaphors again, with a side of BtVS

[heresluck]

So I was part of a poetry reading tonight, and it went okay. I'd hoped to have a chance to revise some new stuff to make it readable, and that didn't happen, so I ended up reading slightly older stuff, including a poem that I initially wrote in praise of jerusalem artichokes (although it ended up going somewhere a bit different later on, and is not

Comments

Poetry? I'm interested now!

[merkuria_lyn]

Well, shame on you! Talking about your poetry and then not even offering a taste of it! ;)

Seriously, I'm rather intrigued - any chance I could read some of your stuff?

[heresluck]

Ah, yes, the intrigue -- it's all part of my cunning plan to make all my LJ friends buy my book when it comes out.

I'll be putting a poem up shortly.

[elynross]

More and more I feel that the only things I can talk about with precision are small, concrete, mundane things like forks and bottles and carrots and postcards and knitting needles. So: the trick is to use the small things to talk about the big things.

This sounds absolutely brilliant. As does your reaction to the empathetic woman. I think a lot of people want the big emotions, the dramatic ones -- they want to be carried away, made to feel. And in an odd way, the epic nature of a lot of traditional poetry is safer than the kind of thing you're talking about, less scary. We want to romanticize pain and suffering, make it less real, and thereby easier to handle -- and treat as unreal. Talking about the minutiae, using that as a mirror of reality, that's true pain. It's concrete, it's inescapable. It's like the best use of the literal in vidding, I think, when it fits visually, and metaphorically, becoming something more than just the concrete item, because we invest it with more. I'd love to read some of your poetry. Do you have any up

[heresluck]

...someone who has given her life to helping and protecting.

And, of course, the kicker is that she's clearly torn between needing to help Spike and needing to protect people from Spike. That's a terrible choice to have to make, but a fascinating one to watch: how characters negotiate situations in which there are no good choices, and yet choices have to be made. And, as Buffy said in "Selfless," she's the one who has to make them.

As for the poetry -- nothing's up online at the moment, but I could change that. Coming soon to an LJ near you...

And since you were kind/foolish enough to express interest, I have to plug Parallel Press, the itty-bitty press that's publishing me next fall. Several of the already-published chapbooks are very good. Not the-second-coming-of-Mark-Doty good, but, you know, good.

[vonniek]

I think what I liked most about that scene is that it didn't seem particularly Spuffy to me; it had less to do with Buffy and Spike's particular tortured history than with the very simple, very human (!) connection of trusting someone enough to ask for help, and choosing to be the kind of person who will respond to that request.

Oh, this is beautifully put. I found the moment quietly moving, and loved Buffy and Spike there more than I have for the longest time (well, I was spellbound by their trainwreck of a relationship in S6, but I didn't like either of them very much during the thing). I'd very much love to see them nurture and develop this non-sexual/romantic connection through the season, *without* having them retread the whole sex/violence shenanigans (which would feel regressive, I think.)

[heresluck]

Trainwreck really is the word, isn't it.

One of the things I'm really liking about this season thus far is that it's quite clear that, if they had it to do over again, neither Spike nor Buffy would do things the same way -- that they may have learned how not to damage each other so badly, that if they were to try their relationship again they might manage to make it work; but they're probably not going to have that chance. I'm spoiler-free, so am working entirely off personal speculation and the current mood of the show and could turn out to be quite wrong about all this, but I just don't see Buffy and Spike getting back together. And I'm fine with that -- especially if, as you say, the show allows them to explore other territory with each other.

All of which is really just a longwinded way of saying: man, I fucking love this show.