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?
There are certain writers that I start reading, and once I dig into that
person’s work, I can’t stop. I have to read all of it. For each writer I
feel that way about, there’s a different reason the work is appealing to
me.
Then there are other writers I read because someone recommended their
work, or I saw an enthusiastic review. I read one book by that author. I
might even enjoy the book, but I feel one is enough. I don’t get the sense
that I need to know more about that writer’s project or style.
I imagine many writers must have those differing responses to what they
read. Some writers grab us by the collar and drag us down, and we can’t
get loose. Others just give us a sweet little peck on the cheek and bid us
farewell.
The writers where I have to read all they wrote, or almost all, are
writers who can do something I can’t, or have a quality I’d love to have.
I even want to be that writer, at least while I’m reading a book by that
author. Sometimes the quality I admire most in that writer is one I hope
to emulate. Other times, it’s one I would like to emulate but know I never
can. They are just too good at what they do.
In the next few blogs I’m going to discuss some of the writers whose work
really grabs me, and why, and some of the writers whose work feels as if I
like it, but I don’t need more of it. What differentiates those two types
of writers?
Creative ideas originate from the natural siftings of thoughts that take
place in our minds. We’re all constantly sorting through random phrases
and images that cycle through our brains. It’s a bit like the process of
leafing through your photos on a personal computer, or on a smartphone.
One thought leads to another in a somewhat arbitrary series of links and
responses to external stimuli.
The trick in coming up with a creative idea you can use in your writing is
to differentiate from your other random thoughts, and then seize on that good idea when it occurs. Immediately begin to identify
and/or develop it. If you can’t, write it down electronically or in a
notebook, so it doesn’t dissolve back into the bubbling brew of your mind.
Here’s an example. The other day I was driving to pick up my son from school, listening to
radio station KCSM, the jazz station in the San Francisco Bay Area. I
don’t even remember what I was listening to, but it made me think of the
way that your intelligence is supposed to improve when you listen to
music. The original study of this, I remembered, had to do with children
listening to Mozart. Then I started remembering a story I’d read in the
magazine Catamaran Literary Reader about endangered California condors and
how large their eggs were, almost like dinosaur eggs. That led to a
thought about the movie Jurassic Park and cloning dinosaurs, and before I
knew it was thinking about the possibility that scientists could actually
clone humans who had lived in the past from a lock of their hair, and that took me to the idea of cloning Mozart.
I realized that small thought was different from just repetitions of what
I’d previously read or seen. That's key in recognizing a creative idea. That thought took me to an idea
of a short story about cloning Mozart. Getting an idea like that is like
trying to peel off a clear plastic sticker from its adhesive back. It’s
incredibly difficult to get the edge of the sticker to separate. You
finally get just a tiny corner to come free, and you have to stick your
fingernail in as fast as you can before that sticker flops onto the back
again. Once you’ve got your fingernail under it, you have to keep
disengaging the thought from the background of shifting thoughts that it
appears on.
So my thought about cloning Mozart immediately took me to the question of
who would raise him? Wouldn’t they choose a musical family in Austria who
could cultivate him to become a classical musician? But what about
siblings? Maybe the siblings might already be musical and grow jealous of
young Mozart II. That and the parents over-bearing insistence that he be
again the prodigy he was capable of becoming might cause him to rebel, to
become an unsuccessful bebop saxophonist trying in vain to imitate Charlie
Parker, and then maybe to renounce music altogether and settle in
Flagstaff, Arizona, to become a dry wall specialist.
When I got home, before I started writing the story, I Googled “cloning Mozart,” and discovered that a writer named Jonathan Rausch had already had this idea and developed it far more thoroughly that I could’ve, as
“In 2003, They Secretly Cloned Mozart.” Rausch added many wrinkles I wouldn’t have thought of, such as a Czech billionaire who undertook this project in secret in order to get Mozart to finish his never-completed Requiem.
OK, so it wasn’t the most original idea, but the point is, to get a creative idea, you have to stand just a bit outside your own thoughts and casually pay meticulous attention to them, so you know when you’ve got a fish on the line, an idea you've never heard of before, and one that readily lends itself to development. When you feel that nibble, don’t walk away, make sure
you reel it in.
Irony is one of the sharpest tools at the disposal of awriter. Essentially, irony means saying the opposite of what you are conveying,but with a wink to the reader so it’s understood that you’re actually advocatingthe contrary of your surface message. The enormous advantages of irony overpreaching to your audience are that irony entertains, uses humor to disarmthe reader’s defenses, and still strikes right to the heart.
One of the most famous examples of irony is Jonathan Swift’s
A Modest Proposal, subtitled For Preventing the Children of Poor People
in Ireland from Being a Burden to Their Parents or Country, and for Making Them
Beneficial to the Public. Even the title is devastatingly ironic. Swift published
this short essay as a pamphlet in 1729 at a time when dire poverty was common
in his native Ireland, and there was no safety net for the poor, who often
faced starvation, disease, and freezing weather with no protection or remedy.
Swift pretended to present his solution to this poverty in
the voice of an optimistic do-gooder. The narrator proposes fattening children
to the age of one year so they can be sold as food for the rich: “I
have been assured by a very knowing American of my acquaintance in London, that
a young healthy child well nursed, is, at a year old, a most delicious
nourishing and wholesome food, whether stewed, roasted, baked, or boiled; and I
make no doubt that it will equally serve in a fricasie, or a ragoust.” The
reader has to laugh, but behind that chuckle is the unsettling thought that
this is really what it has come to: children are so poorly provided for that
eating them almost seems like an plausible alternative.
Part of the brilliance and hilarity of
this essay is that Swift never stops acting his part. He always speaks in the
voice of the concerned citizen, acting the hopeful social engineer who believes
that his solution will work: “I shall now therefore humbly propose my own
thoughts, which I hope will not be liable to the least objection.”
When is it appropriate to use the sort of wry humor Swift employs so successfully? As the poet Chana Bloch commented on the subject of irony in discussing the Yiddish poet Jacob Glatstein, "It's a defense mechanism, a coping mechanism: the more harrowing the context, the more threatening the circumstance, the sharper the irony." The powerless have power when they wield the blade of irony.
Many writers who lived under communism in
Eastern Europe were experts with the razor of irony. The poet Wislawa
Szymborska was particularly good at playing the role of the naive speaker whose
words were just a bit suspect. One great example is her poem “True Love,” which pretends to be an argument against romantic relationships:
True love. Is it
normal
is it serious, is it
practical?
What does the world get from two people
who exist in a world
of their own?
Another great example of irony in
Eastern European literature is Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn’s chapter in The Gulag Archipelago on “The Ships of
the Archipelago.” In this section Solzhenytsin describes the railroad cars used
to transport prisoners to Siberia, or from prison to prison, during the worst
days of the Stalinist purges in Russia. The conditions he narrates are almost
unbearable to read: the crowding worse than any zoo, the disease-ridden water,
the lack of toilets or time to meet basic human functions, the brutality of the
guards. It would be intolerable to read these details, except that Solzhenitsyn
strangely takes the side of the guards against the prisoners. Of course the
guards’ behavior is understandable, he argues, because there is no alternative.
Instead of hauling fresh water from farther away, why shouldn’t they give the
prisoners the more accessible water from the locomotive tender that is “yellow
and murky, with some lubricating grease mixed in with it.” Makes perfect sense,
right? And, he adds, “why should a Soviet soldier have to carry water like a
donkey for enemies of the people?” Solzhenytsin’s argument is close to plausible,
so the irony makes us even more acutely aware of how unjustifiable such
treatment is. The humor of this completely unexpected argument allows the
unendurable information conveyed to be not only readable, but entertaining.
There is another way to deliver a message that I haven’t discussed yet.
It’s not an easy topic to approach for me in this context because I’ve
taken great pains in this series of blogs to rail against wielding a
message like a blunt weapon. But the kind of writing I’m going to discuss
in this blog isn’t didactic, even though it makes its point fairly
directly. When done right, it’s one of the most effective forms of writing
I know.
This means of delivering a message is to focus on an injustice or a wrong
that the writer feels acutely. It doesn’t have to be an injustice or wrong
the author has experienced personally, but it has to be one that comes
from a writer’s very core. Rather than testify individually, the writer
becomes like a prosecutor, calling witnesses, introducing evidence,
creating a watertight case that the reader will then be asked to decide,
like a jury.
It’s not a simple way to write, because an unskilled or naïve writer can
easily fall from righteousness into self-righteousness. The writer has to
have some moral standing to argue this particular case, as certain
attorneys can only argue a case before the Supreme Court of the U.S.A. if
they fulfill certain requirements.
Two poets who use this strategy exceedingly well are Linda McCarriston and
June Jordan. Both have written incredibly eloquently about mothers. June
Jordan wrote about mothers in “Getting Down to Get Over,” among other
poems. “Getting Down to Get Over” is a hymn to African American women, not
just Jordan’s own mother. We feel the poet’s intimate connection with this
subject in these lines:
Consider the Queen
she fix the cufflinks
on his Sunday shirt
and fry some chicken
bake some cake
and tell the family
“Never mind about the bossman
don’ know how a human
bein spozed to act.…”
June Jordan isn’t mouthing platitudes about how racial and class
inequality are bad. She has known this woman, and she has measured the
weight of her suffering and her dignity. Even though this poem has a
message that is not subtle, it works because of the veracity of the
testimony.
Jordan’s poem begins with an incantation, a recitation of many terms that
might be used to describe a Black woman, positive or derogatory. Here are
just a few lines of that sequence that takes up two full pages:
honeychile
sweetstuff
sugar
sweetheart
baby
Baby Baby
MOMMA MOMMA
Black Momma
Black bitch
Black pussy
The sound patterns of that incantation enable Jordan to lift her words to
the level of a spell. When Jordan invokes the figure of Black motherhood
at the poem’s close, the wizardry of the poem shakes us to the
foundations:
momma
help me
turn the face of history
to your face.
I’ve been using the metaphor of a court in discussing this method of
delivering a message partly because I want to close with Linda
McCarriston’s great poem, “To Judge Faolain, Dead Long Enough: A Summons.”
In this poem, the judge, who commands the forces of money, patriarchy,
and the law, sends the speaker’s mother back to the husband who brutalized
her. But the poet can summon other powers against those forces. Call them
the winds of righteousness. By describing the mother’s wounds and the
family’s terror, McCarriston conjures a moral tornado, magically stripping
away the judge’s power. The poet turns the tables and makes the judge the
accused.
His punishment matches his legal crime of ignoring the suffering of those
he’s entrusted to serve. As in Jordan’s “Getting Down to Get Over,” the
language has the diction and force of an incantation:
I call
your spirit home again, divesting you
of robe and bench…
The sentence that McCarriston proposes for the judge is no less than his
reincarnation as a powerless woman at the mercy of a sick and violent man,
so he may personally feel the abuse he ignored when he was in a position
of authority.
These two poets are skillful at calling on the force of righteousness to
make their points. They do this partly by the incredibly specific details
they use to describe moral wrong, and partly by the incantation of their
speech. This sort of voice is also familiar to those who follow U.S.
history. It’s the energy behind Soujourner Truth’s “Ain’t I a Woman”
speech, and many of Martin Luther King Jr.’s most powerful public
utterances. It’s not a mode that a writer can call on every time, but for
particularly strong statements against injustice, I don’t think anything
is more effective.
AWP Boston 2013 promises to be the largest conference ever of the Association of Writers and Writing Programs. Below are links to several blogs about the conference:
Zack
Rogow will be reading at an offsite event at AWP on Wednesday, March 6
at 7:00 p.m. as part of the launch of Cornelius Eady's new chapbook/CD
in the community room of Cambridge Cohousing, 175 Richdale Avenue in
Cambridge MA. He'll also be speaking on two panels at AWP
on Friday, March 8: Things We Know We Love: The Poems and Influence of
Nazim Hikmet, from 10:30 to 11:45 a.m., room 305, Level 3; and What Poets Learn When They Translate, from 1:30 to 2:45 p.m., room 204,
level 2. He'll be signing copies of his latest book of poems, My Mother and the Ceiling Dancers, on Saturday, March 9, from noon to 1:15 at the Kattywompus Press table, booth 1111.
Here are my very
personal and individual picks for this day at the conference of the Associated
Writers and Writing Programs (AWP).
9:00 a.m. to 10:15 a.m.
Room 103,
Plaza Level
S106. P.U.P.: Poets in Unexpected Places. (Jon Sands, Samantha Thornhill, Adam Falkner, Syreeta McFadden, Elana
Bell) I like what this organization is doing, bringing poetry to unlikely
venues.
Room 108,
Plaza Level
S110. Fifty Years Later: Raise High the Roof Beam, Carpenters and
Seymour: An Introduction. (Gabriel
Brownstein, Joanna Smith Rakoff, Thomas Beller, Jess Row, Elisa Albert) This
book had a huge influence on me when I was a budding writer, so I’m giving this
a thumb’s up.
Room 204,
Level 2
S117. Translating Slippery Dreamers: French Surrealist Poetry in the Hands of
American Authors. (Marilyn Kallet, Mark
Polizzotti, Nancy Kline, Bill Zavatsky, Darren Jackson) Good panel. I heart
French surrealism.
10:30 to 11:45 a.m.
Room
302/304, Level 3
S148. Breaking the Jaws of Silence. (Sholeh
Wolpe, Kim Addonizio, Tom Sleigh, Quincy Troupe, Yusef Komunyakaa) Great
panel, important topic on the freedom to write for poets.
Noon to 1:15
Room 202,
Level 2
S166. Bringing Poetry to the People. (Taylor
Mali, Samantha Thornhill, Jon Sands, Roger Bonair-Agard, Michael Salinger) Important
discussion on creative strategies for getting poetry out to a larger audience.
1:30 to 2:45 p.m.
Room 109,
Plaza Level
S188. Found in Translation: Great Nonfiction. (S.L. Wisenberg, Faith Adiele, Patrick Madden, Susan
Harris, Vijay Seshadri) International nonfiction—surprising topic, good writers
to discover here.
S194. Finding New Freedom in Old Forms. (Danielle Jones-Pruett, Jill McDonough, Maria Hummel, Tyehimba Jess) Interesting
group to discuss this topic. I’m betting this will be good.
3:00 to 4:45 p.m.
Hynes
Ballroom, Level 3
S208. POEMJAZZ, A Conversation and Performance with Robert Pinsky,
Laurence Hobgood, and Stan Strickland. (Robert
Pinsky, Laurence Hobgood, Stan Strickland, Ben Allison) A little known
fact about Robert Pinsky is that he played jazz saxophone in a band when he was
younger, so this could be good.
4:30 to 5:45 p.m.
Alice
Hoffman Bookfair Stage, Exhibit Hall D, Level 2
BF40. CIIS & Mission at Tenth. (Carolyn Cooke, Edie Meiday, Margaret Rhee, Brynn
Saito, Pireeni Sundaralingam) Strong group of San Francisco Bay
Area readers.
8:30 to 10:00 p.m.
S264. Academy of American Poets Presents Lucie Brock-Broido and Anne
Carson. (Lucie Brock-Broido, Anne
Carson, Jennifer Benka) A good reason to stay around Saturday
night.
Zack
Rogow will be reading at an offsite event at AWP on Wednesday, March 6
at 7:00 p.m. as part of the launch of Cornelius Eady's new chapbook/CD
in the community room of Cambridge Cohousing, 175 Richdale Avenue in
Cambridge MA. He'll also be speaking on two panels at AWP
on Friday, March 8: Things We Know We Love: The Poems and Influence of
Nazim Hikmet, from 10:30 to 11:45 a.m., room 305, Level 3; and
What Poets Learn When They Translate, from 1:30 to 2:45 p.m., room 204,
level 2. He'll be signing copies of his latest book of poems, My Mother and the Ceiling Dancers, on Saturday, March 9, from noon to 1:15 at the Kattywompus Press table, booth 1111.
Here are my very
personal and individual picks for this day at the conference of the Associated
Writers and Writing Programs (AWP).
10:30 a.m. to 11:45 a.m.
Room 108,
Plaza Level
F138. Role and Impact of International Anthologies.(Kaveh Bassiri, Kevin Prufer, Nathalie Handal,
Geoffrey Brock, Pierre Joris) I’m interested in international
literature, and this panel features important anthologists.
Room 200,
Level 2
F142.Essaying the Essay. (David Lazar, Phillip Lopate, David Shields, Lia
Purpura, Reda Bensmaïa) Good panel, good readers, good topic.
Room 201,
Level 2
F143. Books in the Age of Reader-centric Publishing.(Buzz Poole, Lisa Pearson, Richard Nash, Matvei
Yankelevich, Elizabeth Koch) This topic is the elephant in the room that no one
wants to talk about—what’s happening to literary publishing in the age of the
ebook.
Room
302/304, Level 3
F152. Why There Are Words Literary Reading Series Showcases Boston
Writers. (Peg Alford Pursell,
Christopher Castellani, Tracy Winn, Pablo Medina, Joan Wickersham) This is a
wonderful San Francisco Bay Area series, transported to Boston by its able
curator, Peg Alford Pursell. The theme is that each reader only reads for seven
minutes, which psychologists claim is the time of a listener’s maximum attention
to one voice.
Room 305,
Level 3
F154. Things We Know We Love: The Poems and Influence of Nâzim Hikmet. (Randy Blasing, Mutlu Konuk Blasing, David Wojahn,
Dorianne Laux, Zack Rogow, Sidney Wade) Nazim Hikmet is one of the
great poets of the last century, and this is an important moment to make his
poetry known to the wider audience it deserves.
Room 306,
Level 3
F155. Page Meets Stage. (Taylor Mali,
Martín Espada, Cristin O’Keefe Aptowicz, Aimee Nezhukumatathil, Reginald
Gibson) More good readers from this renowned series based in Manhattan.
12:30 to 1:20 p.m.
Book signing with Eva Saulitis at the Red Hen Press booth.
Eva Saulitis published both a book of poems, Many Ways to Say It; and a book of nonfiction about her work as a
whale biologist, Into Great Silence,
all in the last few months. She will also be signing Saturday at Red Hen from
11:30 to 12:30.
Noon to 1:15 p.m.
Room 202,
Level 2
F173. How to Build a Successful Kickstarter Campaign for Your Publishing
Project. (Meaghan O’Connell, Benjamin
Samuel, Mat Honan, Joshua Mandelbaum, Laurie Ochoa) Useful! Useful is good.
Room 210,
Level 2
F180. The Urge Toward Memoir. (Elisabeth
Schmitz, Jill Kneerim, Michael Thomas, Jeanette Winterson, Lily King) Good
group of panelists, interesting topic—novelists writing memoirs.
Room 303,
Level 3
F182. How to Catch a Pair of Flying Hands: A Reading by Deaf Writers. (Raymond Luczak, Kristen Harmon, Allison Polk, Kristen
Ringman) A worthwhile topic I’ve never seen before at AWP. Good title, too.
1:30 to 2:45 p.m.
Room 204,
Level 2
F204. What Poets Learn When They Translate. (Zack Rogow, Idra Novey, Chana Bloch, Bill Zavatsky) Shameless
self-promotion.
Room 302/304,
Level 3
F210. A Centenary Celebration of Muriel Rukeyser, Sponsored by Paris
Press. (Jan Freeman, Galway Kinnell, Sharon
Olds, Olga Broumas, Michael S. Harper) Who scheduled my panel at the same time
as this event? Muriel Rukeyser, well worth honoring.
Hynes
Ballroom, Level 3
F220. Cave Canem Prize Winners, Then and Now. (Alison Meyers, Major Jackson, Lyrae Van
Clief-Stefanon, Tracy K. Smith, Iain Haley Pollock) Cave Canem is such a
wonderful literary institution, this has to be good.
Room 107,
Plaza Level
F226. A Tribute To Remy Charlip, 1929-2012. (Joshua Kryah, Erika Bradfield, Brian Selznick, Dan Hurlin) My son spent
weeks when he would not go to sleep until I read him Remy Charlip’s Mother, Mother, I Feel Sick: Send for the
Doctor, Quick, Quick, Quick. Remy was a terrific children’s writer and a
terrific person.
4:30 to 5:45 p.m.
Veterans
Memorial Auditorium, Level 2
F250. Alison Bechdel & Jeanette Winterson: A Reading and
Conversation, Sponsored by Emerson College MFA. (Alison Bechdel, Jeanette Winterson, Elisabeth Schmitz) Jeanette
Winterson, live, in person!
Room 202,
Level 2
F263. Blue-collar College Students and the Creative Writing Degree. (Jerry Wemple, Lawrence Coates, Claire Lawrence) Class
is a topic so rarely broached in discussions of creative writing programs.
7:00 to 9:00 p.m.
Offsite
event: Hanging Loose Press authors
reading. Community Church of Boston, 565 Boylston St., across from Copley Square
Park. Great group of Hanging Loose readers featuring Robert Hershon and Bill
Zavatsky, among others. Hanging Loose is one of my favorites of the small
presses, and has some of the funniest and most moving authors.
8:30 to 10:00 p.m.
Veterans Memorial
Auditorium, Level 2
F284. Amy Bloom & Richard Russo: A
Reading and Conversation. (Leah Hager Cohen, Amy
Bloom, Richard Russo) I’m a fan of Amy Bloom and I’ve never heard her read in
person, so this is high on my list.
Zack
Rogow will be reading at an offsite event at AWP on Wednesday, March 6
at 7:00 p.m. as part of the launch of Cornelius Eady's new chapbook/CD
in the community room of Cambridge Cohousing, 175 Richdale Avenue in
Cambridge MA. He'll also be speaking on two panels at AWP
on Friday, March 8: Things We Know We Love: The Poems and Influence of
Nazim Hikmet, from 10:30 to 11:45 a.m., room 305, Level 3; and
What Poets Learn When They Translate, from 1:30 to 2:45 p.m., room 204,
level 2. He'll be signing copies of his latest book of poems, My Mother and the Ceiling Dancers, on Saturday, March 9, from noon to 1:15 at the Kattywompus Press table, booth 1111.
