01-18-2014, 07:16 AM
Heartafire,
"He needs to disassociate"
I read this as a nice double entendre as meaning he needed to sever his ties with her socially, and also emotionally. For the rest of the poem it took several reads to figure out who was who and what their role was. Just by process of elimination I understood the girl was to be his wife. I still have not resolved the stones problem. Obviously they are going to be used to bury her, but she will be dead first.
Here's the problem, although I can probably figure most of this out, I shouldn't have to. This is not a complex idea you are trying to get across, it is simply storytelling. So why the lack of clarity? I suspect you are like most of us and assume that the reader knows more than he does. I had a real bad blind spot when I first started writing, and it took me nearly ten years to begin to see how I made the assumption that everyone should understand what I was saying because I did. The problem was that I was holding back about 50% of the needed information that the reader needed. One way to help with this is to let the piece set for awhile, and then come back to it after you have forgotten it some. It will help to recognize the holes you have left and consequently fill them in.
As far as capping the first word of every line, that convention disappeared mid-twentieth century, and has only been retained for the sonnet.
Example from Allen Ginsberg's Howl circa 1955-56
For Carl Solomon
I
"I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by madness, starving hysterical naked,
dragging themselves through the negro streets at dawn looking for an angry fix,
angelheaded hipsters burning for the ancient heavenly connection to the starry dynamo in the machinery of night,
who poverty and tatters and hollow-eyed and high sat up smoking in the supernatural darkness of cold-water flats floating across the tops of cities contemplating jazz,
who bared their brains to Heaven under the El and saw Mohammedan angels staggering on tenement roofs illuminated,
who passed through universities with radiant cool eyes hallucinating Arkansas and Blake-light tragedy among the scholars of war..."
Dale
"He needs to disassociate"
I read this as a nice double entendre as meaning he needed to sever his ties with her socially, and also emotionally. For the rest of the poem it took several reads to figure out who was who and what their role was. Just by process of elimination I understood the girl was to be his wife. I still have not resolved the stones problem. Obviously they are going to be used to bury her, but she will be dead first.
Here's the problem, although I can probably figure most of this out, I shouldn't have to. This is not a complex idea you are trying to get across, it is simply storytelling. So why the lack of clarity? I suspect you are like most of us and assume that the reader knows more than he does. I had a real bad blind spot when I first started writing, and it took me nearly ten years to begin to see how I made the assumption that everyone should understand what I was saying because I did. The problem was that I was holding back about 50% of the needed information that the reader needed. One way to help with this is to let the piece set for awhile, and then come back to it after you have forgotten it some. It will help to recognize the holes you have left and consequently fill them in.
As far as capping the first word of every line, that convention disappeared mid-twentieth century, and has only been retained for the sonnet.
Example from Allen Ginsberg's Howl circa 1955-56
For Carl Solomon
I
"I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by madness, starving hysterical naked,
dragging themselves through the negro streets at dawn looking for an angry fix,
angelheaded hipsters burning for the ancient heavenly connection to the starry dynamo in the machinery of night,
who poverty and tatters and hollow-eyed and high sat up smoking in the supernatural darkness of cold-water flats floating across the tops of cities contemplating jazz,
who bared their brains to Heaven under the El and saw Mohammedan angels staggering on tenement roofs illuminated,
who passed through universities with radiant cool eyes hallucinating Arkansas and Blake-light tragedy among the scholars of war..."
Dale
How long after picking up the brush, the first masterpiece?
The goal is not to obfuscate that which is clear, but make clear that which isn't.
The goal is not to obfuscate that which is clear, but make clear that which isn't.