(no subject)
Aug. 10th, 2004 10:49 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
novapsycheMy computer is making an ominous, hollow-sounding noise now. I don't know what that means. It scares me.
Just got back from the weekly writers' group. I had a better time (partly because I brought a better poem). There was this gal there--I guess she's a med student. She seems rather intelligent and had pertinent things to say. But she writes poetry like I did when I was an undergrad--that is, lots of abstraction and ambiguity. She didn't quite understand that if the reader doesn't know what the subject of the poem is, he won't be able to figure out what the real subject is. She just didn't care that the reader was in the dark. There's just no arguing with that. I wish I could sit her down with some Mark Strand or Ruth Stone and show her that vagueness is not your friend.
There was this other chick whose writing was very fresh. She wrote fiction, mostly driven by dialogue. We didn't have many suggestions other than for her to send her stories out to magazines. Hands down, she was the best writer there.
Anyway, my Mondays will be free next month. So I'm really hoping to organize a weekly poetry group there at that Borders. I think that would be extraordinarily fun and helpful at the same time.
Just got back from the weekly writers' group. I had a better time (partly because I brought a better poem). There was this gal there--I guess she's a med student. She seems rather intelligent and had pertinent things to say. But she writes poetry like I did when I was an undergrad--that is, lots of abstraction and ambiguity. She didn't quite understand that if the reader doesn't know what the subject of the poem is, he won't be able to figure out what the real subject is. She just didn't care that the reader was in the dark. There's just no arguing with that. I wish I could sit her down with some Mark Strand or Ruth Stone and show her that vagueness is not your friend.
There was this other chick whose writing was very fresh. She wrote fiction, mostly driven by dialogue. We didn't have many suggestions other than for her to send her stories out to magazines. Hands down, she was the best writer there.
Anyway, my Mondays will be free next month. So I'm really hoping to organize a weekly poetry group there at that Borders. I think that would be extraordinarily fun and helpful at the same time.
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(no subject)
Date: 2004-08-10 08:56 pm (UTC)Amen! As someone who went through a period of extreme obfuscation and was later converted to the side of clarity, I really understand that. There's a phenomenon in psychology called the "illusion of transparency," by which people assume that their mental states and beliefs are clearer to others than they really are. So, we assume that other people can tell how we're feeling, when we're lying, and what we're trying to get across, even if we're dropping only very tiny hints. I've seen this cause big blow-ups in relationships, and I'm sure you have too...
Yes, sometimes unraveling something extremely complex and cryptic is rewarding, but you have to make sure that the structure and content really are deep and perfectly-constructed enough to support all that effort. I think a good guideline is, "Don't write Ulysseys until you're James Joyce."