Playing Tennis with the Net Down

By Bonnie Stanard

Robert Frost was quoted as saying, “Writing in free verse is like playing tennis with the nets down.” I would ask, If you’re playing tennis with the nets down, are you playing tennis?

Free verse is usually defined as verse without meter or rhyme. Most poetry I read today is free verse, whether we classify it by form as narrative, lyric, sonnet, etc.

Take a look at the excerpt below from “Nightclub”, written by former poet laureate Billy Collins and printed without its versification. Is this poetry or prose? 

You are so beautiful and I am a fool to be in love with you is a theme that keeps coming up in songs and poems. There seems to be no room for variation. I have never heard anyone sing I am so beautiful and you are a fool to be in love with me, even though this notion has surely crossed the minds of women and men alike.

Prose poems have enthusiastic defenders. This is a poem that “appears as prose, but reads like poetry,” according to www.poets.org. I’d like to know what reads like poetry means. Prose poems throw out meter and rhyme as well as versification. What meaningful difference is there between prose poems and flash fiction? For poets to stake a claim on prose can only mean the genre is desperate for an audience.

Some poets are staking out territory in music. Poetry on Record, a CD collection, includes several poets reciting to music. I have to wonder when some writer will come out with a CD collection of, not lyric poems, but “song poems” with a trio knocking off a beat in the background.

Poetry slams, defined as performance poetry, have emerged as competitive events. In this case, the success or failure of a poem depends not so much on the merits of the writing as the performer’s ability to entertain. Written representations of these poems convey less in terms of drama or substance. 

Fiction writers rehash characters and plots that have been around since the first written words. They’re able to make prose interesting for the contemporary reader without abandoning the devices that serve the style, things like dialogue, foreshadowing, symbolism, narration, point of view, etc.

Poetry, rather than redefine rhyme and meter, is becoming prose, music, or drama. In the 20th Century, rhyme morphed into assonance/dissonance, and meter went from structured beat/lines such as iambic pentameter to syllabic and blank verse. Why have we abandoned rhyme and meter rather than pioneer revolutionary varieties? Surely there are more avenues to explore. Aren’t there?

Put More Drama Into Your Writing—Creating Conflict in Your Dialogue

By Chris Mathews


Dialogue in writing can set mood and establish character, but without one essential quality dialogue can also derail any story.  Good dialogue must contain conflict.  Conflict drives drama and conflict drives all good storytelling.  Where conflict is lacking, usually, so is drama.   In the play GARGOYLES, a one-act I published, I mentioned the importance of the two gargoyles using ornate Latin-derived words to establish a medieval quality to their dialogue.  But the characters would have been little more than intrusive onlookers if I had not been able to define a clear relationship between them.  Notice where the first conflict between the two helps to define their relationships, provide humor, and bring the gargoyles into the modern story they are observing:

FIRST GARGOYLE.   Stone silence…

SECOND GARGOYLE.   Mocks mankind’s folly.

FIRST GARGOYLE.   Demons dwell in eaves…

SECOND GARGOYLE.   Caught in granite guffaws…

FIRST GARGOYLE.   We outlast your short time…

SECOND GARGOYLE.   Withstand your orangutan rantings…

FIRST GARGOYLE.   Your humanegomania…

SECOND GARGOYLE.   Your acid haze…

FIRST GARGOYLE.   Corrodes our veins…

SECOND GARGOYLE.   So permit us…

FIRST GARGOYLE.   From our lofty perches…

SECOND GARGOYLE.   To comment…

FIRST GARGOYLE.   To criticize…

SECOND GARGOYLE.   To cajole…

FIRST GARGOYLE.   To view from afar…

SECOND GARGOYLE.   To scrutinize with a looking-glass…

FIRST GARGOYLE.   To provide comic relief…

SECOND GARGOYLE.   Though these humans provide their own quite well.

FIRST GARGOYLE.    We will be their funhouse mirror…

            SECOND GARGOYLE.   Grotesques.

FIRST GARGOYLE.    It takes a grotesque to know a grotesque.

SECOND GARGOYLE.   In bas-relief.

FIRST GARGOYLE.    We entreat you to observe…

SECOND GARGOYLE.    The intolerance…

FIRST GARGOYLE.    The hypocrisy…

SECOND GARGOYLE.    The passion…

FIRST GARGOYLE.    The insidiousness…

SECOND GARGOYLE.    The vainglory…

FIRST GARGOYLE.    The truth-tellers…

SECOND GARGOYLE.   And the liars…

FIRST GARGOYLE.     The dreamers…

SECOND GARGOYLE.    And the quashers of dreams…

FIRST GARGOYLE.    The religious zealots…

SECOND GARGOYLE.    And, of course…

FIRST GARGOYLE.    Of course, what?

SECOND GARGOYLE.    Of course, what what?

FIRST GARGOYLE.    Don’t mimic me!

SECOND GARGOYLE.    You mimicked me!

FIRST GARGOYLE.    Mimicked me, you?

SECOND GARGOYLE.     You me mimicked!

FIRST GARGOYLE.    Enough!

SECOND GARGOYLE.    Of course, what we are about…

FIRST GARGOYLE.    Which is?

SECOND GARGOYLE.    Demons.

FIRST GARGOYLE.    Real?

SECOND GARGOYLE.   Or imagined.

FIRST GARGOYLE.    Either way.

SECOND GARGOYLE.    Shhh!  They’re scheming.

FIRST GARGOYLE.    Dreaming dreams no mortal ever

dared to dream before…

How is the conflict created between the two gargoyles?  I believe it occurs when the Second Gargoyle rants pretentiously, “Of course, what...” [bold italics]. With this hint, she (the Gargoyles in the original production were played by two female actors) may know more than the First Gargoyle sets the two in a tizzy, characterizing the relationship throughout the play and creatings a lot of fun for the audience as they watch their elaborate attempts at one-upmanship.  They pave the way for future conflicts at this moment when they clash, but they also assure the audience that they will entertain. Conflict drives dialogue.  It is immediate. The characters listen intently to each other so they get what they want from each other--an advantage.

               

First Amendment Blues

By Laura P. Valtorta

Recently I’ve been pondering our American right to free speech, guaranteed by the First Amendment, and how our American outlook makes this difficult to achieve sometimes.

The first time I thought about this, I was showing one or two chapters of my memoir to a writer at the University of South Carolina whose work has been accepted by the literati as worthy of publication. That doesn’t mean he’s a bestseller. His writing is considered worthy.

This fellow read my chapters and told me I had better watch out about writing against certain current beliefs. I should think twice about stating “there is no such thing as race,” for example. That might not be accepted by publishers.

Biologically speaking, my statement is true, and scientists realize this. People have varying shades of skin and different eyes. If humans were actually divided into “races,” we would not be able to have sex and reproduce together. The categorizing of people has resulted in untold evil, but I guess I’d better not anger publishers by stating any unpopular observations.

Also, Americans are not allowed to talk about communism. The subject of communism and who is communist is discussable at any coffee bar in Italy. Communists were American allies during World War II. Italian communists are quick to distinguish themselves from Stalin, but otherwise they’re pretty comfortable talking about their beliefs. They believe in following the law. Most of the Sam’s Club-type stores in Italy are communist cooperatives. You buy a membership and get discounts.

So when did communism become a taboo subject in the United States? Back in the 1950s with Senator McCarthy? It’s just a political party.

I would prefer to live in a county where I can write and say what I believe, as long as it’s non-threatening. If I happen to agree with Governor Haley once in a blue moon, I’d like to be able to say it without getting jumped in a dark alley or threatened by email. Freedom means honesty and elasticity of thought, even when the subject matter is unpopular.

It Starts With a Good Sentence

By Kimberly Johnson

To borrow a phrase…it starts with a good sentence. That’s what I’m searching for this week. With a keyboard under my fingers, I am pecking out the right words to flush out my professional biography. With the 2012 Conference around the corner, I want a polished biography in hand before I travel to Myrtle Beach in October.

I know there are professional writers out there (I ran into several websites), but I want to put in the sweat equity.

Right now, I am stuck and the can of lemon-flavored Pledge is empty. Yeah, I got a top-notch resume, but I want something to grab the attention of agents such as Regina Brooks, Bernadette Baker-Baughman and Stephen Barr.

The goal of a personal bio is to get noticed in a good way, but my dilemma is how to write one without …um, you know, bragging.

I got some questions. I need some answers. I jumped on the Internet to find them.

Question 1: Who is my target audience? That’s easy: Regina, Bernadette and Stephen.

Question 2: How long is a personal bio? For online posting, it can be longer that one paragraph. For print work, one to two paragraphs is fine. I should write in third person, first person is too informal.

Question 3: What are the particulars to include in the bio? I need to let Regina and other agents know about my hometown, work experiences, awards/achievements and highlight my social media platform (blogs, websites, Twitter handle, Facebook page, Pinterest etc.).

Question 4: How can I grab an agent’s attention? Bernadette reads zillions of bios in a month—how can my bio catch her eye? This is the part where I should grab her with unique tidbits: I love cartoons, just saw Madagascar 3. I collect teapots. And, I don’t eat grits. I can make an impression on her with my paralegal experiences and newspaper reporter background.

Question 5: Where can I get some tips? I found seven tips to build a better bio from the University of Massachusetts career services blog. The blog suggests including a mission statement or a vision statement in my bio. It seems like a good approach to introduce the reader to my raison d’etre of writing. (http://umassalumni.com/career-blog).

Well, I have a lot more questions and not enough space to list them. So, I’m going to grab my resume, my unique tidbits and begin my draft.

 

Find Your Magic

 By Leigh Stevenson

We choose to write in a way that speaks to us. Fantasy, history, memoir, essay, fiction, non-fiction, Twitter, Facebook, Blogs. It doesn’t matter. Whatever the form, what matters to most writers is that our work also speaks to others.

What is that magic thing that makes someone pick up one book and reject another? Follow one Blog and not another? Topic? Genre? Cover Art? Author? You could go crazy trying to figure it out. One thing I have learned after years of research is that opinions on the subject are just that. Everyone has one and everyone has advice. If you choose, you can read every blog, book and article on the topic and still be utterly confused.

What I have learned for sure is there are no rules. Aside from a good grammar check and edit you can pretty much throw out every other have-to. For every supposed “rule” there is someone who has broken that rule and been published.

You could just stop. It would be a lot easier. Or you could decide to get on with it and make your own rules as you go. Sure it’s hard. You can immobilize yourself with the immensity of the challenge and trying to figure out the “tricks of the trade”. Being a writer is hard enough without trying to second guess what will sell in the marketplace.

Along with the joy of writing, I have found that a large part of the creative process is a lot like running into a wall again and again. Then there’s the slogging through the quicksand of rewrites and editing and more rewrites. Not that much fun. We persevere, even so.

The best I know is to check your grammar, find a good, honest, knowledgeable writing partner and/or writing group and try to enjoy the process.

And then, once in a great while, there is a moment when everything comes together. The words are right and the sentences flow and you say to yourself, “I can’t believe I actually wrote that”. You find your own magic, not someone else’s version of it.