Tangled Rope

• spear #
• Sword #

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• Food time in Ft Worth w/ @diamond_mind #

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• Fists #
• Audio archive from the Keywest Literary Seminar 2010 (horrible regrets at missing this!): Mark Strand: http://bit.ly/markstrand #
• Tried to use horse glue as a metaphor for love. I /can/ say, like horse glue, this turned out stinkier than I thought it would. #
• cactus #
• 8&c9 (dream) –> 8&c6 #

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• 8&c8 #
• @cosmopoetica Which have you seen? Orpheus Cycle is a must (though from center-out). in reply to cosmopoetica #
• @cosmopoetica First 1/2? Did Orphée bore you so terribly? in reply to cosmopoetica #
• @cosmopoetica I'm fond of Orphee beyond reason. Also L'Eternel Retour, and of course La Belle et la ete. in reply to cosmopoetica #
• .@cosmopoetica The Man Who Laughs blew me away. Watch it when you have nothing else to do… #
• @cosmopoetica I'd start the Orphic Trilogy with Orphee, then Sang, etc. in reply to cosmopoetica #

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• Revisited Ezra Pound's "ABC of Reading" and found it more delightful and astute this time around–for both readers and writers. #

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• Pushing through to "finish" (or, rather, terminate) several confounding sonnets. #
• @cosmopoetica Because I can see you too are into baking, I made some acorn walnut cookies yesterday that were to die for (fresh walnuts). #
• Dagger #
• @cosmopoetica Whew! We were thinking of sending a batch. Pecans are nicer, but it happens that my neighbor has a walnut tree, and fresh=good in reply to cosmopoetica #

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This month Chris and I are going to review The Best American Poetry 2009, edited this year by David Wagoner and series editor David Lehman. I avoid poetry anthologies in the same way I avoid CD anthologies such as Now That’s What I Call Music! Unlike albums, which I view as much as a whole work as a collection of distinguishable parts, I don’t necessarily believe that an individual poem is best served in context of its siblings (though that’s certainly true at times), but I do distrust editors and anything that claims to be "the best".

Indeed, the few reading experiences I have had with The Best American Poetry series have left me underwhelmed if not more cynical than I began, and so I thought it best to leave the anthologies as a sort of in-poetry-crowd A-list (or, an out-poetry-crowd X-list) and indulge in poems either singly as they are recommended to me, or in collections, or in periodicals.

It is my habit to read more canonical poetry than modern poetry–especially so in the last few years, as I have realized large historical holes in my aesthetic education and have sought to cover them, albeit with sticks and torn grass and leaves which I stand in danger of breaking an ankle in during some future conversation. It’s no surprise then that I have felt sometimes inadequate to have the sort of conversations about contemporary poetry with friends as I would like. I decided what better place to start than with the latest, best year’s latest, best anthology of American poetry?

In a beautiful stroke of synchronicity, as I was examining and preparing to purchase The Best American Poetry 2009 in, a hand-written letter was on its way from Alaska, including an invitation from Chris to finish the year by reading and discussing that very anthology, definitely through our blogs, perhaps with audio podcasts, maybe even live audio exchanges.

I am easily excitable, and I agreed.

I am also quickly distracted, irresolute, and moody, and so rather than commit to a post a day (as we’ve done in the past), Chris and I have agreed to make a minimum of 2-3 posts each week. So far that’s the only "rule", but I had to break it down to give myself a more digestible set of objectives. The anthology consists of 151 pages, approximately 75 poems, or 2-3 poems a day: a perfect measure.

I’ve been pushing myself to write by hand more, and so I intend to make notes in a notebook, rather than sit down at the computer and collect my thoughts as I type (as is my habit). This, I hope, will encourage slothfulness in my response to the poems, but not in my reflections on them. Indeed, the portability of a notebook will encourage me to reflect whenever I’m bored, which is more often than you might think.

The anthology won’t be all I’m reading this month. I have a wall of boxes of unpacked books in my study, and every month I like to look through them, rearrange them, and pull books to the top. There are several books (e.g. Lanham’s A Handlist of Rhetorical Terms, Pound’s ABC of Reading, etc.) I’ve set on my night stand to help me warm back up to the topic, if they ever get opened.

This is starting to sound like a New Year’s Resolution list, and it ain’t even December yet! But why not? We start tomorrow. Join us if you wish. I don’t think we talked about a common tag, so I’m using bestampo09bap09.

The mud sucks my knees; during the last month I have made no real progress toward wrapping up the 2nd draft of the novel. This particular project began as a way to practice the craft while taking a break from an earlier, failing novel project that I was too in love with to simply abandon. My plan was to crank out this second novel in just three months, but as I enter into October I must remember that it has been nearly a year since I began.

But I am convinced that the final 60 pages–the climax, the resolution–must now be guided to entwine more cohesively than any of the previous chapters, and my brain is no longer nimble enough for the necessary artistry.

So I have committed to spend my writing hours of the next seven days entirely on poems. New poems, or revisions of half-started poems. Indeed, I have drafted one tonight (“The Ghosts’ Chairs”) that falls apart in six parts; I hope to post it here if only to testify of my commitment to keep on writing. And I must keep on writing, or I will not keep on at all. I have always been the sort of personality that tends to adopt little private chants that cycle through my head when confounded; the current mantra is, simply, “One way out.”

Many writers swear by the one-sentence synopsis, whether for the 30-second elevator pitch, or as a means of hooking an agent/editor/publisher, or even in preparation for a book jacket cover (should you be so lucky!). Randy Ingermanson may not have been the first to suggest the one-sentence synopsis as a seed for outlining a story, but he was the first that I read in my fledgling quest to write better.

I began my current novel project with a one-sentence synopsis, and it not only broke down the first great writing wall, it served as a compass on my (often meandering) journey.

Now, as I am confounded by a plotting error that threatens to sink the climax and resolution of my novel, I can think of no better writing exercise to return to than the one-sentence synopsis. So I spent today’s morning writing hour(s) drafting my single sentence from scratch. I did so with the instructive thoughts of Rachelle Gardner in mind, particularly her recent post, “Tell Me a Story”, which urges authors to answer Janet Reid’s three query musts:

1. Who is the protagonist?
2. What choice does s/he face?
3. What are the consequences of the choice?

These are compelling questions, questions that drive an author toward character-centric plotting. They were critical for me as I drafted and pared and switched and redrafted my one-sentence synopsis.

When the exercise was “done” (actually, when I ran out of time–this is, in my mind, an endless exercise towards a perhaps unattainable ideal) I reflected on a few personal observations:

• My sentence grew in length as I tried to answer Reid’s 3 questions.
• Chopping the sentence back down was like fighting a hydra, but forced me to focus on the most important, intriguing, and (potentially) exciting aspects of the story and its characters.
• Thus, the 3 questions pulled out characteristics and plot points that I need to emphasize or better articulate in my next revision.

I finally allowed myself to write two versions of the synopsis: one as a single, short sentence; another as a 2-sentence “pitch”. The 2-sentence pitch does a better job of reminding me about the important parts of of the story, and should serve me as I work through the third draft (presuming I finish this second!).

The exercise did leave me with some questions, the most important one being: how much do you reveal in the one-sentence synopsis? Like a long movie trailer, many book jackets reveal parts of the story that I prefer to discover through the narrative. I therefore avoid reading book jackets beyond the first sentence or paragraph. But I do wonder if describing or at least alluding to implications of the story’s set up might provide suspense, and hook readers into discovering how the setup arrives at its conflicts.

Nearly a year ago, at a peak of mental anxiety, I decided to cease flitting around and finally write a complete novel, a goal I’ve had since I was 8 years old. Let me be completely candid and communicate the importance of this challenge: while my love of the art of good fiction contributed to my desire, the critical motivation to embark on this challenge was far more personal, centering on my 15-year high school reunion (which I won’t attend) and the fear of mortal obliteration.

I started with a strong idea born of a dream that could sustain itself across a 300pp book, and probably beyond, in the autumn of 2007. I’ve been working on it with good regularity in the mornings before work, trudging through outlines, character sketches, chapters, and half-chapters.

But as this summer rolled in I knew I was far behind my own expectations. I was revising chapter after chapter of the first third of the novel incessantly. I knew there was something wrong.

Being an English grad and a lover of literature, I have a comfortable knowledge of how to write, what a storyline looks like, and why character development happens. I’ve read and benefited from Adam Sexton’s Master Class in Fiction Writing. But pulling off the writing of a complete novel was more of a struggle than I had expected, and I began to wonder:

• Would this be a book that I as a reader would want to read?
• Could I keep the increasingly disparate events and characters cohesive for the second and third “acts”?
• Would this novel be a book I would want to have my name on, or if I would try to disassociate myself with a tricked-out nom de plume?

It was then that I stumbled upon Randy Ingermanson’s snowflake method , which oriented me to perceive my idea as if I were a reader picking the book up off the shelf. I began by writing a single-sentence synopsis. That went well; however, at step 2 I froze: I could not write a summary of my novel in 5 cohesive sentences. There was just too much going on, and it was all over the map.

I forced myself to step back and said, OK, you have your main character, you have your scenario, you know the climax of the novel. Now write a 5 sentence summary around that, and make it intriguing.

My end result was not perfect, and it left most of my work on the first third of the novel unusable. But it is something I would want to read, and I am finally confident that I have planted the right seeds. I can now see how my summary fits into the traditional 3-act storyline that Peder Hill elaborates on in this diagram:

Very exciting.