Saturday, December 04, 2004

HOW BREAKING UP MAY BRING TOGETHER

Some well put advice by Adze (Allen Sutterfield), which I decided to type out before reconsidering (again) the poems he was responding to. In a way seeing the drafts of the poems in question is beside the point: I think the comments apply generally. I think. Generally speaking. If you weed thru the particulars...

Brian,

You can easily mix prose with lyrics, a time-honoured amalgam, that also frees up the saying by allowing for more breadth and depth. You are in fact already doing this in these pieces, & it is definitely part of their strength. I think making shorter sections - that is, making sections per se - rather than running it all together is a tactical change that would benefit the reader - a whole page of single-spaced print is too formidable and discouraging & also forces the reader to acknowlege the shifts & then remember them & keep them clear -- & nobody's going to want to or like to do that - besides, a page looks more interesting to my eye, when the text is broken up and the whole page is used - just visual arranging can do a lot & even say a lot. After all, the long poems do have "sections" already, whether acknowledged in print or not. Why not let the print be mirror rather than wall?

To go back over your poems with a more acute visual eye can also aid in your attention to the "attention field" any good poem is. You can look at the writing more objectively, and be less immersed in its content (tho this is not to belittle content at all, in fact, content will be enhanced, because it will become more nearly itself, rather than the habitual conventional expression-forms of itself). You actually don't need to do anything content-wise, the content is fine and plentiful. (You might want to add some bits in "Harangue", but that is not really new content so much as content presently missing!)

So. Let this be just a couple of opening remarks in an ongoing discussion. I'll stop trying to say everything at once, one or two things clearly said will be better.

Adze
Nov. 12, 04

3 comments:

Charles said...

I think that's really wonderful advice. I feel like I've read a book that really deftly mixes short prose with some lyric moments. Have you read Tony Tost's book yet? It's all prose, but it's broken up really interestingly....

What wonderful feedback to receive! :)

Brian Campbell said...

I've just received it in the mail. I looked at it, wondered why it was classified as poetry since the lines went all the way to the right hand margin, then put it on my shelf to read later. I find the random enjambments of prose daunting. Newspaper columns horrify me. All those truncated trimeters! Just kidding...

Brian Campbell said...

... actually, botched tetrameters...