--Ezra Pound, on Tropic of Cancer

I don't have time for this. I don't have time for anything, which no doubt explains why I haven't been doing anything.

It's the fucking simultaneous deadline problem again: given the History final essays to do for tomorrow, or the poetry, I could handle it. But both at the same time? I can't even get started on one without falling to pieces.

Phebe prefers the first draft to the second one. The first one, she says, is rougher around the edges, and more immediate; the second is more polished. The result is that, in the first draft, one gets the impression that one is tapping directly into the thoughts and feelings of a frustrated poet. In the second, you're aware that you're reading a work that was written to represent to the reader the thoughts and feelings of a frustrated poet.

I agree with the analysis completely. I'm not sure I agree with the preference, though. I kinda like my works more polished.

On the other hand, I'm aware that the whole style of writing used here is more in line with what she likes, rather than what I do. In other words, given that I don't generally write this way, perhaps -- just perhaps -- my instincts aren't the ones to trust here.

Or perhaps not.

On the third hand, I'm not entirely satisfied with some of the changes I made anyway, so it seems most likely that I'll change part of them back, while retaining others. Either way, I'm definitely doing the line breaks her way.

Or, anyway, that was my assessment before the workshop hit the poem.

The general consensus was along the lines that the poem suddenly bursts into life with the bit about "the ginger halo of the sun," and continues on until "the linoleum floor," after which it sinks back into the mire.

Certainly, when I was writing -- and revising -- the thing, I felt the writing starting to work in the "linoleum floor" verse paragraph.

And I know was holding back in the verse paragraph following it. "Maybe I haven't experienced enough of life" is pretty damn vague. Details would add a whole lot there, but I'm not sure which to choose, and, frankly, I'm sort of afraid to do so.

See, given the fact that, for two verse paragraphs, the poet within the poem shows a command of what the class would consider to be the writing of good poetry, the class pretty much refused to believe his claims of not being able to write poetry. So what's really going on, then?

One possibility suggested (and seconded) was that the poet knows full well that he can write poetry the conventional way, but is marching to the beat of a different drummer, doesn't like that sort of writing (for some unknown, perhaps incomprehensible reason), and refuses to compromise his principles. Instead, he deliberately sets out to frustrate the reader, giving her a glimpse of the good stuff, even showing off a bit, but refusing to carry it through.

Well, ummm... I wasn't being that obnoxious, no. Not this time around, anyway.

(Not that I can be upset about the charge, as I did set out to do something rather similar a few semesters back, in a fiction writing workshop. But that's a whole 'nother story.)

(I ended up explaining those, and had already more or less decided to drop the former, at least. The metal dish was a very bad pun, which I hadn't expected anybody to get, as written: it's actually a "cymbal." Whereas the white whale, from Moby Dick is simply the archtypical symbol: whatever it represents, it's clearly not just a whale, right? Even non-Lit majors know that...)

The ending, too... let's face it, I'm hardly the first person to end a poem by saying that I didn't have a poem. It was felt that I might profitably drop the last couple of verse paragraphs entirely, and I'm inclined to go along with that. The present ending is, to some extent, a vestige of the zeroth draft (the MUD version), in which the entire thing was written around that final line.

About which you, too, may be wondering what the story is. Could I, in fact, write an entire poem along the lines of those two verse paragraphs in the middle? If not, why not?

And, in fact, the answer is... no, I don't think I could.

This is due to one of the reasons why I generally consider myself to be a better editor than writer, especially as it pertains to creative writing. I know how to refine what's on the page. Given somebody else's work, I can see how to tighten it up and make it more interesting.

It's in actually creating the stuff that I run into trouble.

Let me put it this way: prior to writing this thing, I had no idea whether there really were any brownstones on Delancy Street. (I've since been told that I guessed correctly.)

Was I trying to find a way of representing a particular mental image I'd had in words? Not at all; I was choosing details at random. "Sunset" is about as stock an image as one can get in poetry, so it came to mind. The only question was in choosing details that haven't been driven into the ground in the past.

So, "the red glow of the sun" was out. What else can one use for "red" that hasn't been overused in this connection? "ginger" came to mind... thus "the ginger halo of the sun." Now, a place. "Over the buildings" won't cut it. "Down the street" is just as bad, and "on the mountains"... well, please. Thinking locally... well, "Delancy Street" has character, and so do brownstones, so "the ginger halo of the sun above the brownstones on Delancy Street" it was. And I'll agree that it sounds nice, but the fact remains that, in my mind, it's nothing but a random, empty image, signifying nothing whatsoever.

Ditto everything in the following verse paragraph, which had been chosen at random, although I quickly replaced the rather silly "peanut butter in the chocolate" reference with the more interesting "broken back of the wicker chair," while tying everything in that verse paragraph into one scene. I still don't know the first thing about that protagonist and antagonist, though.

Now, it would be nice if I could write some sort of a plot involving a protagonist and antagonist, perhaps setting it in a brownstone on Delancy Street, but I really don't have a clue about how to do so. Especially given the bit about them copulating, with me being a virgin and all.

And there's the thing. I don't like random imagery for the sake of random imagery. When you come right down to it, I think the two "successful" verse paragraphs in the middle work only insofar as they serve as an illustration of what the poet really can't pull off in a full poem. When you come right down to it, while it's not entirely straightforward, there is, at least, a sort of sense, a logic, to the piece as a whole, which is missing from that illustration within it, taken by itself.

Does that make any sense?

Sigh.