Advice for Writers: In Blackwater Woods

Showing posts with label In Blackwater Woods. Show all posts

Friday, February 8, 2013

How to Deliver Your Message, Part 4: Coming out of Nowhere

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 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 structure of the poem, rather than giving away where the sonnet 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 veering 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,

Autumn leaves in New England—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 Mary Oliver really 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 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

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Zack’s new book of poetry, The Kama Sutra for Senior Citizens and Other Poems on Aging. Order in the USA Order in the UK

Zack’s most recent translation: The Water Drinkers and Other Sketches of Paris in the Romantic Era by Henry Murger

Saturday, June 9, 2012

Putting Together a Book Manuscript, Part 6: Endings

On what note do you end a book of poetry, fiction, or creative nonfiction? With a crescendo, like a classical symphony? One famous example of that is the final chapter of James Joyce’s Ulysses, where Molly Bloom’s soliloquy goes on in an eight-page, nonstop sentence and ends in breathless affirmations.

Or do you finish with a quiet image that lingers, leaving the reader to ponder:

Then felt I like some watcher of the skies

When a new planet swims into his ken;

Or like stout Cortez, when with eagle eyes

He stared at the Pacific—and all his men

Look’d at each other with a wild surmise—

Silent, upon a peak in Darien.

—John Keats, “On first looking into Chapman’s Homer”

Ending with a stunning image—“Silent, upon a peak in Darien”—can sometimes be more effective than a crescendo, since it’s understated and allows the reader to measure and experience the full impact of the ending.

But how you end a book depends entirely on what comes before the finale, and how the last act fits organically with the rest of the book. A book is a living organism. You can’t change one thing without affecting each morsel of the text. The ending has to fit with the rest of the book or it will feel manipulative or tacked on.

I once made an attempt to write a young adult novel. I was having real problems with the ending, but I couldn’t identify the problem. I showed my draft to one of the experts in the field, Marilyn Sachs, award-winning author of more than 30 books, including Veronica Ganz and The Bear’s House. One thing Marilyn told me is that you should never try to tie up all the loose ends when you conclude a book. Life is messy. Any denouement that neatly packages all the unsolved questions feels artificial.

In general, the ending has to be different from the rest of the book. If everything is the same at the end of a book, the reader feels as if there is no story, nothing learned or gained. If the middle of the book is wracked with doubt, the ending could well be calm and/or resolved. If the world the book depicts is full of certainty and self-assurance, the ending might involve questioning. If the book is about pain and loss and mourning, the ending often conveys a sense of grounding and renewal. If the story involves childhood innocence, then experience and maturity and wisdom could be the gateway at the end.

In thinking about books that consist of shorter pieces—poems, short stories, or essays—the impact of the last piece is not as important as that of the best piece. The nature of a collection of shorter pieces is that they tend to stand alone. For that reason, the most enduring thing about a book of that sort is not the closing note, but the most memorable note. The exception would be the collection where the final piece is the best piece. Does anyone remember what the last story is in Raymond Carver’s book Cathedral? But you probably do remember the title story, because it’s such an amazing piece. Do you remember the last poem of Mary Oliver’s Pulitzer Prize-winning collection American Primitive? Most likely no, but you might remember “In Blackwater Woods,” the poem in the collection that lives on, retyped by countless fans on their websites and shared from person to person, with its stunning final lines.

Other recent posts on writing topics:
Putting Together a Book Manuscript, Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5, Part 6, Part 7, Part 8

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Zack’s new book of poetry, The Kama Sutra for Senior Citizens and Other Poems on Aging. Order in the USA Order in the UK

Zack’s most recent translation: The Water Drinkers and Other Sketches of Paris in the Romantic Era by Henry Murger