This blog provides advice to writers on their literary work.
See the end of this post for links on these topics: How can you get the full benefit of workshops? How can you work best with your mentor? What, when, and how should you publish?
Nowadays when I prowl the aisles of
shelves in the public library looking for a book to read, it’s so difficult to
find the right one. Sideways I read names of authors I don’t know, thinking
about taking a chance on a book I’ve never heard of, and then I remember that German
novel about the fresco restorers in Prague where I never got the sense of humor,
and I hesitate.
I even hesitate at the titles I’ve already read, not eager to repeat
any experiences, reluctant to admit I wouldn’t remember the books anyway, like Middlemarch, which I was forced to read
in Venice at age 20.
George Eliot (Mary Anne Evans)
The only store I could find there with English books only
had a few, but I ended up traveling so far into that world George Eliot created
that I barely left my room in the pensione,
foraying out occasionally into that city of mirrors and skies at sundown to
watch the clouds gather at the apex of the heavens like soapsuds draining in a
reverse bathtub, understanding why Tiepolo and Canaletto and Turner could not
get enough of that city.
J.M.W. Turner, The Grand Canal, Venice
Then I think that I should read
something completely different from my usual picks: a history of Venice in the
late eighteenth century, the assembly of the human genome, a biography of the
person who invented the smartphone. But I have to confess that facts without
beauty or imagination bore me.
No, I can’t decide what book to
take out anymore, because every story seems to be about disappointment, so I
magnetize toward the volumes by authors whom I’ve heard read in person or have
met, knowing their personalities well enough to be sure they won’t betray my
hope that the book will offer some bits of topaz, some involuntary chuckles,
some ecstasy or indignation to lift me above my cubicle and monitor. But the authors I know,
I’ve counted on them too often, and even their
books become a disappointment, since their minor works and juvenilia are never
up to their masterpieces, the books where I follow the characters in their bustles
and redingotes and shakos, reassured that letters can paint as well as
nineteenth century artists carrying beechwood boxes full of little tubes of mortared
pigments blended with linseed oil and white spirits.
What book, what book? Or maybe I
just have to bear down and think of something to write about, something as
mundane and ridiculous as what reading matter to choose in the library.
One way to convey your theme to
readers is not to lead up to it, as in The Big Moment, but to surprise the
reader. At least, not to lead up to the message in an obvious way, but in a
subliminal way. The surprise sneaks in and then leaps out in the final lines or
sentences of a poem or story or essay.
A writer can spend most of a
poem or essay or story describing one thing, and that thing can be only
distantly or obliquely related to the theme. Then at the very end, BOOM! The
writer suddenly says what he or she wants to communicate, but in such a way
that it doesn’t feel predictable or heavy-handed.
One famous example of this is
Rainer Maria Rilke’s great poem, “Archaic Torso of Apollo.” I’ve translated and
written about this poem in another blog, but the ending is worth mentioning
again in this context. The poem seems to be a description of an ancient and
broken statue. Pretty boring, right? Except that Rilke makes that statue emanate
light and sensuality by comparing it to a glowing lamp and to a wild animal’s
pelt, among other things. He also uses a tightly constructed sonnet to call
attention to the poem itself, rather than where it is heading. Then in the
poem’s last five words (in the German original), he clobbers the reader with a
message so didactic, so strong, that it is unforgettable. He gets away with
this sententiousness by catching the reader unawares, only leading up to the
end in the reader’s unconscious, never showing that the poem is headed in that
direction.
Another great example of this
strategy is one of my favorite poems, Mary Oliver’s “In Blackwater Woods.” You
might want to read the poem first, so I don’t spoil the ending. Emily Dickinson
once said, "If I feel physically as if the top of my head were taken off, I know that is poetry."
Emily Dickinson
Mary Oliver's "In Blackwater Woods" never fails to blow the top of my head off.
But “In Blackwater Woods”actually starts
out as though it’s only going to be just a nature poem about the beauty of fall
foliage:
Look,
the trees
are turning
their own bodies
into pillars
of light,
How trite can you get? Except that Oliver
starts with the imperative, “Look,” giving us a clue right from the start that
something is going on in this poem that requires our rapt attention. And
surprisingly, the trees not only have bodies of light, they are redolent of cinnamon and “fulfillment.” Already the poem is subtly conveying that something is undulating
beneath the surface of this landscape:
and
every pond,
no matter what its
name is, is
nameless now.
Notice the peculiar
repetition and setting apart of the word “is,” strangely unliterary,
prefiguring the diction of the poem’s last two lines. But why are the ponds
nameless? I don’t really know, but I’m guessing it’s because they are so
sublime in their own right that they are beyond any name that humans place on a
signpost or a map.
Then
Oliver kicks it into gear: “Every year/everything/I have ever learned…leads
back to this”. So now we know we are in the realm of revelation, and what we
are about to learn transcends the everyday.
Her
reference to “the black river of loss” suggests Lethe, the river in Greek
mythology that the dead must cross to the Underworld, the river that erases all
memory. But instead of the other side being the kingdom of the dead, in
Oliver’s personal myth the other bank of the river is “salvation.” Salvation is
a familiar idea in this Christian culture, but Oliver’s idea of salvation is
one with a meaning “none of us will ever know.” These are powerful and absolute
statements by Oliver, but they are so unexpected, and so different from the usual
homilies about being saved, that they arrest us. We realize this is not going
to be any kind of sermon we’ve ever heard.
Then
Mary Oliver delivers the final pronouncement, again addressing the reader
directly, as she did in the poem’s first word: “To live in this world//you must
be able/to do three things...” Why is she speaking so directly to us, and what
are those three things she’s talking about? We immediately want to know. It
turns out they are actually very down-to-earth, and so desperately and
beautifully and simply expressed:
to love what is mortal;
to hold it
against your bones knowing
your own life depends on it…
Then the final
imperative, with its oddly repetitious phrasing:
and,
when the time comes to let it go,
to let it go.
Those lines are a
kind of “letting go” on the poet’s part as well. She is no longer adorning her
poem in literary devices and sparkling originality. Mary Oliver just lays it on
the line. And she does, she does.
Other recent posts about writing topics:
How to Deliver Your Message: Part 1, Part 2,Part 3
One method of delivering a
message in a work of literature that I find satisfying and effective as a
reader is when the writer gives me just barely enough information to figure out
the puzzle on my own. That solving in my mind is the “Aha!” moment. And the
closer it comes to the ending, the better it works for me. If I don’t get it
till the very last word, so much the better.
For the writer, it’s a bit like
writing a murder mystery. In a mystery, you want to plant little clues for the
reader, but unobtrusively, so you don’t tip your cards. You want the readers to
enjoy the guessing game, to want to solve the mystery, but you don’t want the
readers to guess who the murderer is before you reveal it. Once the secret is
out, you want the readers to think, “Of course! That’s so obvious.” But it
shouldn’t be so obvious that the readers know on page 10 what you reveal to
them on page 210.
But in a way, creating an “Aha!”
moment for the reader is like writing a mystery where you rip out the last
chapter. The reader becomes the detective and solves the crime. There shouldn’t
be a moment like the one in the classic mystery where Inspector Burley-Hyde confronts the murderer in an English country house where he has gathered all
the suspects in the well-appointed parlor with its lace doilies and concealed
revolver. For the kind of “Aha!” moment I’m thinking of, all the suspects
should be under one roof, but the reader should be the one to finger the
murderer.
That may sound fairly abstract,
so I'll give an example of a short poem by Tess Gallagher that creates an “Aha!” moment for the
reader.
Tess Gallagher Here’s a link to Gallagher’s powerful poem, “Each Bird Walking.”Please read this marvelous poem
before taking in the rest of this blog, so I don’t spoil the surprise of the
poem for you. Gallagher’s poem is a mystery
from the start, with its oddly convoluted phrasing:
Not while, but long after he had
told me
This phrasing becomes more poetic and feels more necessary, though,
each time you read the poem.
The poem starts with a lengthy
and almost utilitarian description of a man washing the body of his frail and
elderly mother, shortly before her death. The description is fascinating, and
so wonderfully paced that it imitates the patience and care of the man who is
washing:
…the
rag
dripping a little onto the sheet
as he
turned from the bedside to the
nightstand
and back…
Notice how the enjambments mimic or enact the actions of the
man going back and forth from the mother’s body to the washbasin with the damp
cloth.
But why this meticulous
description that takes up most of the poem? That question itself becomes the
mystery. We get a clue in the stanza that begins “as though he were a mother,”
where the man who must be unnamed is transformed into a mother by the act of
washing his own elderly mother, an act that is loving without being sexual. We get closer to the heart of
the mystery in the next stanza:
And because he told me her death
was
important to his being with her,
I could love him another way.
But even in helping to clear up the mystery, Tess Gallagher
is creating more mysteries with the phrase, “I could love him another way.”
What does that refer to? It’s like a murder mystery where a second victim hits
the ground before our detective can even begin to figure out the first crime.
And then Gallagher adds that haunting and incredibly simple phrase from the
mother:
“That’s good,” she said,
“that’s
enough.”
It seems
as though the labyrinthine mystery of this poem could continue a long time before
arriving at an explanation, but the whole story careens to an end in
the last ten lines. We find out the speaker of the poem was the lover of the
man who washed his mother. We find out that he ended their affair “so as not to
hurt/the one closer to you”, i.e., his wife or partner. And finally, we find
out that the speaker asked for a parting memory that would allow her to
remember the man with love despite his hurting her, and that’s when he told the
story about washing his mother. Gallagher concludes by echoing the quote from
the mother that she had given us just ten lines earlier, but now in such a
different context—or is it so different?
It’s a
breathtaking ending. It breaks my heart every time I read it. The culmination works
so well because Tess Gallagher takes us right up to the edge of the cliff,
shows us where to look, but never says, “See, that’s the Grand Canyon.” In this
case, the Grand Canyon is—what? I’m not entirely sure.
Maybe
the title gives us another clue. Birds fly beautifully, but they only walk very awkwardly, the poet has
explained in an essay about this poem. So when we attempt to love without sex,
in a spiritual way, we are like birds wobbling on the ground, moving forward,
but clumsily, and yet that is part of the hard work of being human. But if
Gallagher had come out and flatly said all that at the finale of her poem, it
would have been a terrible ending.
Yes,
“Each Bird Walking” has a message, it has deep emotion, it has a beginning and a
middle and an end (though definitely not in that order!), but the final “Aha!”
is in the reader’s thoughts after taking in the poem, the way a chord lingers
in the air at the end of a solo piano concert.
