Still Tinking

Puntitas has received two more rejections since her last post. She didn’t have much hopes for either (well, a little hope for one), so the news wasn’t very disappointing. She did entertain the thought of assigning an acceptance probability rating to each submission, but entertained it briefly on considering that such ratings would only highlight her inability to predict the likelihood of success. Puntitas is no stranger to self-flagellation, but she isn’t into cesspits of despair.

She missed some manuscript deadlines, the books to have been sent out by Saturday, but she’ll send them out tomorrow anyway on the assumption that editors will want the money enough to accept them. Her excuse of the day is that she was having serious trouble sleeping for much of last month and couldn’t think clearly enough to finish the revisions and editing she had in mind, then was suddenly overtaken by sleep the last few days. Even now, she’d rather be sleeping than typing though dinner is still a couple of hours away.

Today’s poetic efforts have centered around reorganizing the poems in the books. In one book, she has moved two poems in one section, moved one poem in another, and removed two poems in a third. In the other book, she’s thinking more work will be needed. Two sections make sense, one sort of does, but the third doesn’t at all. She’s thinking about changing the title of the book, but hasn’t quite figured out how to organized the two iffy sections.

Since her last post, Puntitas has also been working on two new poems. Well, she hasn’t made much progress at all with the almond poem (waiting to be less sleepy), but she did start another one, a Shakespearean sonnet on a subject she’d written about before (she destroyed the previous poem because it didn’t really do what she had intended).

She’s thinking she really does need to finish up a couple other drafts and maybe strengthen the pieces in one section. She’s thinking she can’t believe she thought her books were done last year.

Puntitas reads _Amy, Come Home_ by B. Michaels and _Wicked Game_ by L. Jackson. These were a nice Halloween break. Today she resumed the other stuff where she left off.

In the Details

When is a piece of writing ever done? That’s the question I struggle with most. I think things are done. Then I read them again months or years later, and I realize they’re not. That more than anything keeps me from feeling like an accomplished writer.

Real writers know. Real writers read their work years later, say, “I would write that better now,” but feel satisfied that the poem or story was written well. I write, and when I read the piece again from a stranger’s distance, I think, “This is the work of an amateur.”

Most often, the devil for me is in the details. Without much trouble, I catch gaps in the logic or the plot, and I catch inconsistencies in images or characters,. Where I’m likely to find problems is in the nuance suggested by all the little details: the gesture a character makes at a key point in the dialog, the shape or size of an object on a table, the length and rhythm of a paragraph or line. Sometimes they contradict me. Sometimes they distract. Sometimes they do nothing. Sometimes they do too much. The frustration is that, when they’re working, I know God is in the details.

Last Sunday, I reread my two sonnets and another one of the poems I’ve been working on relatively recently. Over all, I like the sonnets. They’re clear, detailed, and easy to read. The endings, which had been my great concern, hit the right notes in both what they say and how they leave the reader feeling. On the Shakespearean sonnet, I unchanged most of what I’d changed the last time I worked on it. That realization was what ultimately decided me to call the poem finished.

When I read the Miltonian sonnet, I discovered it read much better than I expected. I spent most of my energy changing details in the octave to develop the image in the title. The bony whore seems more out of place than ever, but she was too helpful in the writing and is too precise about the nature of the wait for me to let go of her yet, so I may send the poem out a few times before I can get up the nerve to replace her with some other story.

The third poem is one I’ve never mentioned here. I like it for lots of different reasons. It was well received in workshop. It’s got a solid build. It’s a tribute to the power of art. It made me feel close to the friend who inspired it. I’ve sent it out a few times, but it hasn’t been picked up. Each time I read it, I notice some of the details “aren’t there yet,” a wonderful expression I heard to describe a lack of readiness to understand or articulate, and though more of the details are contributing to the wholeness of the poem now, many of them still are not. How long will I have to wait? How long?

Starting with the Image

I’ve had very little inspiration where writing is concerned. Too many other things are cluttering my head this week, most of them work related, something I’ll probably write about sooner or later. I did have one tiny tremor of an idea one morning, one of those thoughts that flits into the consciousness while I lay in bed waiting for the alarm clock to ring. Three images—a child’s ball suspended in the sky at sundown, the optical illusion of a foot next to a cloud, a woman standing at the foot of some stairs with her spine arched completely back, her hands on the lower steps—came to me, starting with the last and ending with the second. There was another image, a reaching or scooping hand. At first, I thought it was random. Then it helped me gather the other images together, developing the cloud image into a playground swing, the bar overhead and the chains that attach the seat.

Before the fingers enclosed the images into a beginning, the memories just floated around in my head, shuffling like snapshots into different orders, revealing more details, fading, growing again. Each reminded me of having wanted to center a poem around it, but until the hand caught each up and held it against its palm, nothing united them, gave them meaning.

In bed, out of nowhere, I started to feel the peculiar lightness and energy of a piece of writing clamoring to make it to the hard drive, that flaring of experience. If I teach a poetry class, I will probably tell my students that images are pictures or sensory experiences evoked or elaborated to explain what something means for the speaker or why it is important. But images are more mysterious. They’re the nut of a poem, the originating impulse, the supporting detail. They tell narratives in layers, In my case, each image told the same story, but it had something different to say about that story.

As I lay there, the images became more defined. The hand came clearly and fully into focus, and I understood immediately that it was the story all the other images were telling. Part of me knew that I’d need to hang on tight to whatever was developing because I’d have to get up in five minutes to get ready for an early appointment. Part of me wanted to tell the appointment to screw itself so I could let the images play out.

What made the images a moment, rather than the draft of a poem, was that the vast descending hand suddenly seemed cliché, and the narrative, one that I’ve written about before. I know that, as with the Shakespearean sonnet, some narratives are worth telling more than once, but all at once, this one didn’t seem worth retelling at all.

That realization turned all the airiness into flat, dense disappointment. I thought about the seeds of two other poems I’ve been carrying around. They’re images and general thoughts, but something—the right detail, perhaps?—is missing. I wish I knew what would make them bloom. Maybe I can use the ball, the swing, and the arching woman to figure it out.

The Blog Does Its Work: WDG Complete

I think I finished my Shakespearean sonnet—again. Tonight I read it without planning to, and I liked it.

Yes, the blog is doing its work: I pulled up the file only because I was feeling guilty about not having posted anything manuscript related this week.

Like last time, I picked at a word or two, knowing exactly which ones and why and knowing exactly what their substitutes or additions would be. This time, I wasn’t bothered by the movement from unusual to ordinary because the imagery at the start (unusual) evokes a lulling mood that shatters in the last few lines (ordinary). The final couplet is still not the embodiment of originality, but it’s one of those old truths that unsettles us every time we are reminded of it, so like anyone who’s ever written about seizing the day, I can live with the heard-before.

By my third rereading, I was thinking the details that were necessary for the turn to work were “clever devices,” not integral parts of the poem. I was tempted to tinker, but I’ve decided to trust they are fine, and I’ve decided to send the poem out next week in my first mass mailing since March.

And I’m a Knitter Too

We may as well get the unpleasantness out of the way once and for all. I’m a knitter, and knitting is part of my writing process, so knitting will appear here from time to time.

First, I’m usually listening to audio books while I’m knitting, so I’m thinking about how a piece of writing is put together while I’m also thinking about how a piece of knitting is constructed. If I don’t have anything to listen to, I plan my next piece of writing or work out the kinks in a current project.

Second, knitting has taught me to think differently about how to accomplish a goal. When I knit, I think about what it is I want to achieve. Then I think about all of the little tricks and techniques that can theoretically help me do that. Most of the time, I’m dead wrong, but every once in a while I pull it off. In the knitting realm, two no-hole sock patterns are my major accomplishment, It was also the project that helped me realize I can do the same with writing and other things. My most recent application of the principle has been in the sonnet: I’m giving myself the task of figuring out what I want the ending to do.

Third, since most of what I know about knitting comes from the web, I’ve learned to research and enjoy it. Now I actually stop in the middle of a piece of writing to look things up or—stunner of all stunners—to read a book or two on the subject. With the Shakespearean sonnet, I looked up information about root systems. Almost none of it made it into the poem, but I did move some details around to be consistent with reality. A newer poem started entirely as research, and turning facts to poetry has been quite the task.

SO I’ll post patterns from time to time, and if I can talk someone into taking pictures for me, I’ll post them too.

WDG Near Completion

Just a little celebration. I think I finished my Shakespearean sonnet last night. I had a breakthrough about some rough patches. A few words fell into place (at this stage, it comes down to words), and some of the flab dropped out of the final couplet.

Funny how a week ago I was still thinking that nothing could be cut without the poem losing its concreteness. Then last night I suddenly noticed words that added only syllables and places where the poem stalled in repetition or digression. Without conscious effort, I was able to substitute metric props for content and did more of the work I needed to do for the poem to reach its destination. This is one of those moments of possession that is almost as magical as the rare poem that writes itself.

When I read it again just now, the pacing of the poem surprised me a little, and the shift from the beginning section to the end worked well.

I’m still not sure about the last two words: they say what needs to be said, but they don’t mark the end of the journey the way a rolling pipe organ or a single stroke of the triangle does. As I write, I realize that the problem may be that I start with the unusual and move to the ordinary—serious flaw. Party canceled.

I vaguely remember that some of Willy S.’s sonnets don’t end up at Rhodes. I’ll have to read a few to examine how he gets from Point A to Point B and make it work.

Revising WDG

Yuck and double yuck!

I’ve worked on a poem a couple of days this week, and the ending is a real struggle. Hitting the right note, the one that lets you twist the action of the poem or surprise the reader in a way that is satisfying without being “clever” is hard, hard work.

This is a Shakespearean sonnet I wrote eight or ten years ago. I thought it was done. Then I worked on it before the thesis and again afterward. Each time, IT WAS DONE. The current set of revisions was sparked by a rejection letter, even though it was done.

I ask you flatly, “How can anybody turn down greatness?”

When I read it last month, I decided the mood of the first half didn’t match the mood of the second. My options were to figure out why and incorporate the transition into the poem or to make the moods consistent. After some wishy-washiness and confusion, I opted for the latter.

Then I realized the ending didn’t do anything but repeat what the rest of the poem had been saying. Eight or ten years ago, when I wrote the thing, the ending did something very different. That difference didn’t fit into the current poem, but if I emphasized more of the mood of the body, I could reintroduce the old ending as a twist.

More rewriting, rerhyming, and rethinking. A personal high five for working in the word “mucilage.” Lots of whining. The final couplet. A tightening of the heart at my own use of language.

Sleep.

Reboot.

Read.

WHO FUCKED UP MY POEM?

The ending makes little sense. The final couplet is strong in that it manages both to detach from the first twelve lines and to connect firmly to the rest of the poem. It’s got images and emotive thrust, but the words themselves, especially the last two don’t really say what they need to.

I’ll probably let it stew for a while. If I haven’t figured it out in a couple of weeks, I’ll ask a friend to read it.