So I'll be finishing up with school here in the next year, perhaps year and a half if I decide to extend it, and I've been brainstorming all the summer on my BIG IDEA. Namely, my thesis. Now what I propose is nothing new. I'm not reinventing the poetry book. In fact, I've been studying three modern examples to sort of guide my idea.
Those Examples:
Some Ether by Nick Flynn
Leadbelly by Tyehimba Jess
What the Living Do by Marie Howe
I want to write a collection of stories. In poems. Based all around one main idea. And I think that idea is my fascination, fear, and humor for death. See, I've not until recently been able to see how death has had huge overtones in my life. Sure, I've been to at least two dozen funerals, been around loads of people that have died, and known quite a few who were dying or are in the process of. (That's everyone I suppose.) But I've never been able to trace back to where my absolutely morbid sense of humor springs from or why I'm so interested in writing about murder, accidents, funerals, and burials.
I've found the two big ones for me. My mom's battle with cancer and my aunt's funeral. Which experience, not to lessen Aunt Carol's death, was really a manifestation of my greatest fear. My mom dying.
Sure, I've seen these types of poems pop up from time to time in my writing. And my thesis isn't necessarily going to be linear or just center on this. Mixed in will be stories of other people I've met. Tragic ones though. Cuz that's the kind of story I like. I don't know how it will all weave together. Not sure. But maybe Sharon Olds will help steer the reins. I'm trying to get her as my thesis adviser. Which would be hiphopotomus.
You're baring your bones, James. So good to read stuff written on the edge. Feels good; sounds good. You inspire me. I think your talent + guts will help you dive into the center, and I wish you luck.
ReplyDeleteThank you, Sharon. I'm just hoping the final product will not end up whiney or woe-is-me but something of real artistic value. I'm not sure how all the pieces will come together but we'll see. I promise to send you rough copies of my manuscript as I get it together. You can tell me when I'm holding back on the truth or meat of things. I tend to do that sometimes.
ReplyDeleteExciting, James. I will buy, oh, 7 or 8 copies once you publish, which will be the second you finalize all this.
ReplyDeleteButting in on and continuing the prior dialogue, do you feel like "holding back on the truth" is the ultimate evil for this? Why is such stark honesty prioritized above all else? Ironically, it seems that some concealment is the more honest and true-to-human-form treatment. I think if our impulse is to hold back some truth, then our instincts are probably good. Please don't think that I am telling you what is or isn't right, James, I'm mainly just musing aloud about this subject, which lately I have thought about extensively. What do you think? Guide me here, Seamus.
good 4 you'z dood. i'm coming to new york last week of august. would be good to hook up... send me digits or somethin. as number I have for you only ever gets me a voicemail.
ReplyDeleteIt must feel good to have the concept, at least, set in stone. The work I've read here over the last few months has been, oh, I don't know, nakedly delicious. None of the whine or dreariness for which certain recently published mediocre poets have turned out. I have complete faith in your abilities to meet the task you've set.
ReplyDeleteJames, I am sorry about your mom. And I'm sorry I haven't said that sooner.
ReplyDeleteInteresting, Joe. May I butt back into prior dialogue, since I'm unrelentingly curious about this topic? How are you defining "holding back on truth"? I agree our instincts to "hold back truth," at times, from an audience definitely should be trusted. Or, Geez, in my case, ugly men with official badges and thick glasses would come looking for me. But, I'm always scared of holding back truth from myself (I think this comes from my protective uneasiness of not wanting to stare God in the face just yet, which [instinct]I find ridiculous). I don't feel I have choices until I've "prioritize stark honesty" (I love how you phrased that),though I could be wrong. In fact, I've wondered if this insane quest to name my own universe--exactly--is not an obsessive neurosis, a hang over from reading too much Thoreau, since "truth" that comes over time is more beautiful--I'm more prepared for it. Does this make sense? It's just that I get impatient, and I want to see a "thing" clearly, with all its opposites, and view it with great acceptance--without fear--just to basically "see" it. It's like not wanting to turn a certain corner because a terrorist might lurk there, but maybe there's no demon around the corner, and yet I don't make the turn. . . .What if I don't turn corners and "learn by going where I have to go" because I'm afraid of stark honest reality. I don't know. Like Roethke, I do know that I often "wake to sleep and take my waking slow." And I can't believe I used the word "thing" above. Ha. Could I possibly write, on James' Blog, with any more abstractness? Please forgive these self-indulged ramblings.
When do you find out about Sharon Olds?
ReplyDeleteI want to comment on this Sharon and Joe. I think it's a worthwhile topic. I am always torn between sharing and withholding. But it's 230 in the morning and I need sleepy time.
ReplyDeleteJames, I love narrative poetry the best. I'm very very very very very very very excited to read what masterpieces you divulge.
ReplyDeleteAs far as the James/Sharon/Joe Stark Honesty Debate 2007, I don't know about the rest of you, but my stark honesty changes about every 45 minutes to 30 seconds and sometimes I'm feeling three or four different honesties at once. I've never had a real good handle on my one real core truth because I'm always shifting my lens and reorganizing my view on a thing (that "thing" is for you, Sharon).
Which is what I love about a story told by lots and lots of poems. You can pull in different angles, different moments that ARE real (but if you tried to string them all along in one cohesive coherent cooperative piece you'd have to fudge the details to soften the edges to make the pieces fit, you see?). So I guess I'd have to say my stark honesty would be to take the average mean of a variety of separate maybe-truths or sometime-truths. Is that shady?
Oh, and also, and in conflict with my last comment, I would much rather take the closest to core honesty than canned honesty or writing what you think will sell or even what you think Sharon Olds would buy.
ReplyDeleteI say, be aware of the audience, but only to sift truth.....not to smudge it or smear it in the name of popularity or commerce. Unless you're really really really good at it, and Oprah doesn't catch you.
Then again, I wouldn't want to see you starve.......I suppose you keep honest and pay the bills making sandwiches somewhere. At least you'd get a discount for lunches.
It is hard for me to know what honesty is sometimes. Most of my poetry is honesty up until the point that I feel honesty isn't enough for the piece.
ReplyDeleteI may have mentioned this before but one of my professors up here felt that in my poem Expiration Dates the last part was untrue. Not that any of you should remember my poetry but the poem is about an accident my brother saw in which two people were covered with the two gallons of milk that exploded in their car. The "fiction" of the piece which my professor took exception to was the part I added about my brother smashing all the milk jugs in response to the accident.
But I feel that was greater honesty because it described the real feeling my brother was feeling. The anomie and violence of the situation. Why fiction has great truth than non-fiction sometimes. It paints what sometimes we can't because we can't properly the explain the complexity of human behavior in a situation.
I think, Joe, what I do sometimes is hold back on the truth because I'm afraid of revealing too much. What Sharon Morgan has taught me is that I'm missing out on some wonderful truths for discovery. Several poems, including "The Hulk is the Patron Saint of Scared Little Boys" came out of that exploration.
I would say there is a fine line. I find that plain old gut spilling turns into a lot of woe-is-me-whining. And it portrays a person who doesn't really exist. I'm not an emotional wreck. My life, while difficult at times, is not ready for Maury. I'm reasonably self actualized. Maybe more so because I'm able to handle my own truths.
Speaking of fiction to better describe emotions and inner inner inner feelings, an extreme and cool testament to the idea is Kelly Link's Magic for Beginners. Most of my class hated this book. I was an exception and for good reason...the fictional short stories include zombies, terrifying bunnies, haunted houses--all the best. Not a drop is true, but the descriptions attack certain feelings better than lots of real life trauma stories I've read. Worth a look, perhaps, if you've got the time. A fast read.
ReplyDelete"Holding back" from looking (or searching)is a good way of putting it, James. I try to avoid this kind of holding back at all costs, and often the cost is great. I'll walk through discouragement, even fear--when I hold paradoxes of the present and of my own life (let alone the paradoxes of modern American) up close and personal, and it often hurts like a stove scorching skin to still decide to choose faith anyway. It's like wrestling with an angel for answers--for truth. But it's the only path I want to walk. And there's great joy in it also. Next? Then? I believe it's our responsibility to share, but I'm not talking about exposure. Exposing a part of oneself is like flashing. It seems a cheap trick to get a shock reaction or attention or sympathy or . . . whatever. And even though it may be the "stark honesty" of the moment, there's no art to it because it's not even the total reality. In other words, exposing may come off hap, hap, happy-I-don't-care-if-the world-spins-out-of control or the other extreme of "woe-is me." Simple exposure is not the whole truth because it never seems to have opposition in it. Does that make sense?
ReplyDeleteI agree with Em that many truths can fill up even 1/2 a second of my life, but I don't like "half-truths," especially the half truths I tell myself because they never satisfy; they leave a vague void. And when I put words around them and speak, they don't connect me to another human being. In fact, they're like empty but noisy, irritating air bubbles filling up the spaces between people. The kind of stark honesty I'm talking about is a "search"-- for the right perception (which would include opposites), the truest angle, the right word, the exactly precise sentence or image that embodies "truth." And if this means we take an image from a different experience or era or from another person to add to our own honesty in order to illuminate our discovery of reality for others, we do it-- because whole truth is slow and not chronological.
I believe this "dance with the details" is the path writers have to walk and talk or we stagnate and have nothing in the black hat to pull out; then our writing turns stiff. or worse, we become boring; horror of horrors. I do believe, still and always, that part of the process encompasses "revealing"--definitely a scary process because of our fear of other's judgments--but if it's honest, it seems to me a sacred act. In fact, I think all great art is some kind of revelation.
But, then, again, who knows? Certainly not moi, since it's almost 3 am, and I'm falling asleep next to a black and white dog and a gray and yellow cat who's curled her paws clear around her head. Clunk. I hope I read this in the morning light before I post, but I probably won't. Good discussion J. J. and G.
You're all full of beans. Tell the truth or lie. No one cares as long as it's funny.
ReplyDeleteJaren Watson, YOU are funny. You make me laugh. Such a gift, you snake catcher.
ReplyDeleteSometimes I'm not ready to confront a truth. I sat down to write a poem the other night about something that I've been meaning to explore but I couldn't do it. It was too emotionally near still. But I feel I need to write about it someday.
ReplyDelete