Living the Fictional Dream

When I was a copy editor (before my tech writing days), my team used to say that only a fool copy edited his/her own work. Our little copy editing joke based on that saying about how a lawyer defending himself has a fool for a client. I claim no knowledge of anything related to the law, but it boggles my mind how hard it can be to see the errors in something I’ve written myself — especially right after I’ve finished writing it!

I think that the writing portion of the brain is totally separate from the part of the brain that knows grammar, spelling, punctuation, etc. The creative side of the brain likes to see the piece as you meant it to be, not how it actually is (hence missing words — the kind of thing that happens when your muse talks faster than you can type!). As a whole, creativity is a different mindset from the logic of copy editing.

Now, I think I’ve discovered a new part of the writer’s brain — let’s call it the poet’s corner!

I took a poetry workshop in graduate school. The professor had his own poetry published and, for a time, was the head of the creative writing portion of the department. Most of the students in that particular class were people seeking their masters or their PHD in poetry. I and two of my classmates were prose people who’d taken the poetry workshop for the experience. Next to all the others, we were rank amateurs.

As far as classroom critiques went, that poetry workshop was the hardest of my whole graduate school career. Graduate school crits are far and away more difficult than working with my writing group today. Partly because you’re students thrown together by chance instead of friends, and partly because, since the critiques were part of our grade, a lot of students hunted for things to dislike about your work (I guess they thought it would impress the professor) and never worried about telling you if they liked anything. They also weren’t sticklers for constructive criticism, and didn’t care if they crushed your muse. But those crits gave me a thick skin when it comes to criticism and rejections, and they made me really appreciate the supportive, yet constructively critical, writing group I have today.

One of the poems I wrote in that poetry workshop was about something I’d seen in real life. I’d been driving to campus one day, when I saw, on the side of the Interstate, the burned out husk of a car that had been in an accident. But what struck me was that, in the trunk of that car was a dozen red roses. The flowers had a shocking beauty when compared with the soot-streaked metal of the car, and it made me sad to think about the person who probably died in the crash and the person who loved them enough to bring the roses.

I took the poem to class, and no one liked it. No one. The comment I will always remember was from this girl who seldom had anything good to say about anyone’s poem. She said I shouldn’t have used roses because they were too cliche. It was her only comment at all on my poem.

That moment nearly turned me off to poetry entirely! I was so angry… One of the things I like about writing is being able to use inspiration taken from the real world. Sure, not always and sometimes you change it, but other times the real world inspiration is important. And that image that I tried to recreate in that poem would have been totally different if the flowers had been violets or calla lilies or irises! The roses spoke of love, and the color red spoke of passion. It had to be red roses!

After that, I decided to tackle the poems I had to write for that class in a different way. Instead of trying to tell a story that meant something to me, I focused on the language to the exclusion of nearly everything else. I called it word-smushing — I tried to put together words and phrases that sounded cool without caring what they meant. The weird thing? My professor ate up this new style, and I ended up with an A in the course, even after such a stilted beginning.

With the opening of Every Day Poets for submissions, I decided to dust off some of my old poetry and give submitting it a try. The first poem I sent them was one that I’d written based on an actual event. I’d gone out to the country one night to watch a meteor shower, and when I got out of the car, a hamburger wrapper blew by and smeared ketchup on my leg. The poem was my imagining of how that wrapper came to be on that deserted stretch of road. But EDP rejected it. So, I pulled out a poem that I’d written in my word-smushing days , and it’s been accepted. Woo-hoo! I’m excited about it.

Let me be clear, I’m not dissing either EDP or poetry in general. Not at all. It’s been eye opening to have my poetry reacted to the same way as it was in graduate school (though, I much appreciate the EDF editors for being positive and constructive in their rejections, as opposed to the snootiness of some of my former classmates).

Now that I have more distance from that poetry workshop, the more I think maybe the reason my “real life” poetry isn’t successful is my own mindset and the writing style that mindset evokes. I’m a prose person. Poetry is hard for me, and when I’m writing poetry about something real, I think maybe I’m too literal about it. I use too many conjunctions and articles, when every word needs to have a certain kind of importance. The word-smushing somehow gave me access to the poet’s corner of my mind. Using something less personal as the subject helped me get away from telling the story and really explore the poetic nuances of language.

I’m proud of the poem that EDP accepted. I had fun writing it back then (despite my issues with that workshop class), and some of the wording and imagery I used has stuck with me, even eight years later. And the poem is actually about something — it’s just not about a real life event or image; it’s about something more ephemeral than that (the title of the poem is “Inspiration,” if that gives you an idea). I’m really excited for the poem to appear in EDP, whenever that comes to pass.

I don’t know that I will ever pursue poetry in the long-term. It’s a challenge for me to get into that mode, apparently. I wonder if there is such a term as “prose-bound”?

The thing I admire the most about poets is how they can take so few words and make a piece of writing where every single word is important and pulls its own weight. To do that and to tell a story at the same time… that’s impressive! 

I’m glad EDP has come along. This poetry submission process has helped me to re-examine some of my misconceptions from that grad school workshop, and I think I’m a better writer for it. And, who knows… maybe a few trips to the poet’s corner are in my future. We’ll see what my muse has to say!