Emotional/Aesthetic Struggles
Jul. 28th, 2003 09:45 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
pantryslutThis is a weird thing.
This is doubly weird because I don't usually like discussing my writing before it's done. Bear with me.
Next week's SF Literation Front "assignment" is to write a persona poem (that is, a poem written in a persona not your own).
I've been idly working on a poem cycle for a while now -- well, I guess it's a cycle because there's more than one poem on the subject, anyway. It centers around a character called Aging Lady Poet (hereafter known as ALP). I figured she would be the ideal character to write this assignment about.
ALP, the character, is based on a former poetry instructor of mine. She's semi-famous, a bit of an iconoclast, and a little bit of research will easily turn up who she is, but I'd prefer not to name her here. (Mark it up to superstitions about invoking demons, if you like.) We had a...difficult relationship. She liked me, but she didn't like my poetry. It didn't help that I myself was struggling with poetry when I took her workshop. What did I want to say, and how did I want to say it? I was losing all sense of the answer to those questions. Her exercises did not inspire me. Nor did her feedback, which was less nasty to me than to other students, but still. I flailed. It wasn't long after that class that I took a long-term hiatus from poetry. Nearly a decade-long hiatus, as it happens.
Part of me blames her for my long dry spell in my 20's. It's an irrational blame, but there it is. I am angry at her. This cycle is an attempt to resolve that anger.
So it turns out that it's very hard to give her, via ALP, a voice in her own defense.
And so I'm reading a book of her Selected Poetry. And even better, these poems are all about one of my favorite subjects -- food.
Food as a class marker. Food as a way of disowning one's past. Food as an aesthetic choice, a pursuit of beauty, an "Apollonian" order (her words not mine).
In other words, it encapsulates everything I hate about some people's approach to food. Food as a representation of refinement and taste, a happy embrace of the intimidation that a skill with food can engender. Precision -- fifteen grams of chocolate for the torte. Discernment -- not these olives, but those. Canned peaches and refined sugar are to be shunned.
Snobbery.
And like a pot of water, I am suddenly a-roil.
But not blocked. Oh no. Blocked is not the problem.I've got several pages of verse fragments and notes already, just this afternoon.
Fairness is the problem.
Mockery is a skill that I am perhaps not proud of, but that I definitely possess. I could mock ALP, and through her my former instructor, her voice and her subject matter, without breaking a sweat.
But that isn't going to resolve my anger. And it wouldn't be a fair poem. It would be a cop-out. It would be putting my words in her mouth. She would be a puppet.
Aging Lady Poet is so much more terrible than that. Believe me.
And frankly, if this is going to be part of the cycle, it's important for her to display her beauty and her terrible splendor here. Not to be reduced to a mockery. For who would be afraid of the caricature I could make of her?
What have I bitten off with this project? This feels so much bigger than I ever intended.
It's scary.
But how much of this personal drama will ever translate to the page?
I'm freaking myself out. I wish I could figure out how to short-circuit this cycle and get on with it.
This is doubly weird because I don't usually like discussing my writing before it's done. Bear with me.
Next week's SF Literation Front "assignment" is to write a persona poem (that is, a poem written in a persona not your own).
I've been idly working on a poem cycle for a while now -- well, I guess it's a cycle because there's more than one poem on the subject, anyway. It centers around a character called Aging Lady Poet (hereafter known as ALP). I figured she would be the ideal character to write this assignment about.
ALP, the character, is based on a former poetry instructor of mine. She's semi-famous, a bit of an iconoclast, and a little bit of research will easily turn up who she is, but I'd prefer not to name her here. (Mark it up to superstitions about invoking demons, if you like.) We had a...difficult relationship. She liked me, but she didn't like my poetry. It didn't help that I myself was struggling with poetry when I took her workshop. What did I want to say, and how did I want to say it? I was losing all sense of the answer to those questions. Her exercises did not inspire me. Nor did her feedback, which was less nasty to me than to other students, but still. I flailed. It wasn't long after that class that I took a long-term hiatus from poetry. Nearly a decade-long hiatus, as it happens.
Part of me blames her for my long dry spell in my 20's. It's an irrational blame, but there it is. I am angry at her. This cycle is an attempt to resolve that anger.
So it turns out that it's very hard to give her, via ALP, a voice in her own defense.
And so I'm reading a book of her Selected Poetry. And even better, these poems are all about one of my favorite subjects -- food.
Food as a class marker. Food as a way of disowning one's past. Food as an aesthetic choice, a pursuit of beauty, an "Apollonian" order (her words not mine).
In other words, it encapsulates everything I hate about some people's approach to food. Food as a representation of refinement and taste, a happy embrace of the intimidation that a skill with food can engender. Precision -- fifteen grams of chocolate for the torte. Discernment -- not these olives, but those. Canned peaches and refined sugar are to be shunned.
Snobbery.
And like a pot of water, I am suddenly a-roil.
But not blocked. Oh no. Blocked is not the problem.I've got several pages of verse fragments and notes already, just this afternoon.
Fairness is the problem.
Mockery is a skill that I am perhaps not proud of, but that I definitely possess. I could mock ALP, and through her my former instructor, her voice and her subject matter, without breaking a sweat.
But that isn't going to resolve my anger. And it wouldn't be a fair poem. It would be a cop-out. It would be putting my words in her mouth. She would be a puppet.
Aging Lady Poet is so much more terrible than that. Believe me.
And frankly, if this is going to be part of the cycle, it's important for her to display her beauty and her terrible splendor here. Not to be reduced to a mockery. For who would be afraid of the caricature I could make of her?
What have I bitten off with this project? This feels so much bigger than I ever intended.
It's scary.
But how much of this personal drama will ever translate to the page?
I'm freaking myself out. I wish I could figure out how to short-circuit this cycle and get on with it.
no subject
Date: 2003-07-29 07:44 pm (UTC)The SF Literation Front is a writing group that
no subject
Date: 2003-07-29 08:06 pm (UTC)I know what you need to display that!
Consummate V's!
Then you will have not only beauty and splendor, but majesty.
ALP, the Versinator!
(For those of you who think I've gone off the deep end, I point you towards:
http://www.homestarrunner.com/sbemail58.html
And you can join me there.
S.