The Best Of... discussion

I think you guys are the right audience <3

Oubliette

Embracing darkness,
you seek escape,
clamor, chaos.
Forgotten, forsaken,
hiding in sighing silence
harkening solely to daemon chaunts,
savoring the perversity of pain.

Harried by Arawn’s hounds,
pale flanked, red eared,
silent snarl and bared fangs.
All Annwfn awaits, yet
you seek a narcotic nether world,
dreamless, dolorous.

Despite the Cwm Annwn,
you dray deeper, farther down,
heavy with despondence’ harsh harvest
fool’s courage of despair driving you
deeper into dark delusion
in defiance of hounds harrying,
hurrying.

Sustained by pain
Searing, subsuming, saturating.

Life and hope banished;
only the madness of memory remains
in the depths of your chosen darkness.

Fool.

Sleep, you seek,
the Fata Morgana
promises false peace.
There is no rest for the unrequited.
Refusing desire,
spurning the soaring gift already in your hands
even as the tower trembles, tumbles
nine swords pinion your wings,
wielded by Treacherous Regret
your chosen lover,
forever false, faithless.

Fool.

You choose bitter dark dregs
from eight cups,
spurn Airmeith’s renewing
nectar from One.

Fool.

You dangle over the abyss,
Death’s gnomon.

Pretty damn chilling. Something do you with your book?

Not really . . . but now that I think about it, yeah, maybe.

Kind of a precursor.

Not Quinn's voice though. But he'd get it, maybe even take the warning.

At the risk of being obvious: The darkness within? And division.

I think one of the coolest aspects of poetry is everyone gleans something individual from it.

We write it with an image of our own, but it evokes a personal, unique image for each reader.

Renee wrote: "I think one of the coolest aspects of poetry is everyone gleans something individual from it.

We write it with an image of our own, but it evokes a personal, unique image for each reader."

But what's so great about that, in a way? (And please feel free to tell me if I didn't 'get' your poem because I probably didn't.) The more times I read a poem the closer I feel to the poet's vision. Takes a couple of reads at least, usually, to actually begin to see through their eyes. That's not true of all poets, but it is true of the ones I especially like (Celan, Mandelstam, Rilke, a number of others). And really, that's what I want from a poem. I don't want 'my' experience of their poem, I want their experience.

You'll never achieve "their experience" because that's just impossible. It is good as the reader to try to, but ultimately, no matter how hard you try, you are going to end up with an interpretation of your own. Ideally, as a reader, you recognize both aspects and you contemplate both of them.

Oh, you do get the poet's vision, but you get to see that vision through your own lenses.

You did *get* it, I think.

What's different in poetry from fiction is that, unless it's a story-telling/narrative type poem, the story is pared away and what you get is emotion, impression that you can relate to at an elemental, visceral depth as well as an intellectual one. So the story you see in the poem is yours as well as the poet's; it's an intuitively interactive, evocative form of writing.

Yes, there's a story behind it, a soul-friend who closed himself off from love, swearing that for every moment of happiness you pay for it a hundred times in pain and it's not a worthwhile bargain. I thought he was making a terrible mistake at the time.

I've since come to agree with him, completely.

Yeah, I'm not very good at presenting my own opinion or interpretation of someone's poem, but I love hearing other people's interpretation of the ones I've written in the past. I think they are all equally valid. As the reader, you yearn to feel it like the author does, but ultimately, you will interpret it through your own experiences and thus it will have a unique meaning to the reader. That's what is so perfect about about poetry imo. It is equally valid from every perspective.

Exactly, Will!

Will wrote: "Yeah, I'm not very good at presenting my own opinion or interpretation of someone's poem, but I love hearing other people's interpretation of the ones I've written in the past. I think they are all..."

I don't see it that way. I don't see the point really either, unless you are saying that I can experience Stalinist Russia or Eastern Europe during the Holocaust 'best I can' through Mandelstam or Celan's voice and vision. Could I have done that on my own before reading them? Not in the least. Of course I can't totally experience what Mandelstam experienced that caused him to lose his mind and die in a labor camp. But I can experience what I have never imagined, and not through the 'lens' I owned before reading the poem. Same goes for Kafka, or Proust, or Melville or any brilliant writer whose world I know not at all until they introduce me to that world. No, I disagree with both of you on this.

I don't see the disagreement in what I've said from what you just said. You are never, ever, in any possible way or form, going to be able to understand the poem the way the author does. Because you can't possibly have had the same experiences. And, imo, no author in his/her right mind could possibly expect the reader to understand their writing with the same understanding/emotion.

I don't have to have had the same experience any more than a poet writing a persona poem or a fiction writer creating a character who is not him or her has to have had the same experience as the character they are writing. Imagination, empathy, and some kind of magic we don't entirely understand plays a part in reading as well as writing. As someone who also writes poetry and fiction, I hope my writing evokes enough of the same emotion I feel, through myself or a character, for a reader to connect with that emotion. It doesn't have to be the same; but it should be close enough.

To love, is to die a little death. To love deeply, is to see a little Hell.

I see you a bit more clearly. Thanks.

Yes. Again, no conflict with what I said.

Getting back to Renee's piece for a mo.

I liked it, struck a good balance between fantastic rhetoric & narrative thread. This coming from one who loved "The Hobbit" at age twelve and was left cold thereafter by fantasy (though tried hard to read Mervyn Peake, I could only stomach Herman Hesse's fantasy-like books).

With a Welsh heritage, anything with words like "Cwm" gets my attention.

I wonder if "dray" in the third stanza may be used as a verb? I half-thought it might be a typo for "stray", but dunno. I suppose it could be a verb, as in trollied about like a barrel. Later in the same, isn't "despondence'" missing its possessive "s"?

Good share. Thanks.

Yes, Phillip, "dray" is used as a verb :-)

I left the 's off purposely; for one, I tend to the "no 's'" in the possessive after an "s" sound, for another, it would ruin the cadence.

But good catch.

And, like Will, I don't see any conflict with Kallie's last post and Will's and my explanations? We've all said the same things, to my understanding, at least, in different words.

Philip wrote: "Getting back to Renee's piece for a mo.

I liked it, struck a good balance between fantastic rhetoric & narrative thread. This coming from one who loved "The Hobbit" at age twelve and was left cold..."

I suppose this illustrates our discussion, because I had not even thought about fantasy so much as an inner dialogue and downward spiral in swirls of rather dark color except for the touch of red. (This comment is an attempt to convey my more subjective experience of Renee's poem; my first comment, which I realize read more like a Tarot card reading, was more of an attempt to read Renee's own meaning.)

You caught that well, Kallie. There's a strong thread of tarot image running through it, although I had aimed for it to be such that it would still be decipherable by someone not familiar with tarot.

For someone who is, it's a hidden panel, a secret password.

Renee wrote: "You caught that well, Kallie. There's a strong thread of tarot image running through it, although I had aimed for it to be such that it would still be decipherable by someone not familiar with taro..."

Of course. I see that more clearly now; acquainted rather than familiar with the Tarot but the images probably seeped in as I read.

Thank you, Kallie! I love knowing they appeared to you like that — seeped in. :D

The Fool is both the beginning and the end of the major arcana in the tarot.

Death is transition.

You might find some things of interest in Rachel Pollack's "Seventy-Eight Degrees of Wisdom." It's not a book you have to read straight through. It's easily browsed in chapters or sections. There's a great deal more to it than tarot. https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/1...

Thanks, I will check on that. I love the hanged man image for some reason. Oh, I know. We do that in aerial yoga (you use a hammock) and it feels really good, and I think of the hanged man when we do that.

I didn't get the tarot stuff at all and have now re read it going, aaah! I'm not a tarot person myself, but I do appreciate there are layers of meaning hidden in those swords and cups.

Is there a tower in the tarot, too? I saw it as phallic.

Yes, there's a tower. http://www.llewellyn.com/blog/wp-cont...

The Tower speaks of violent change, usually involving the destruction of a belief or or the revelation that what we thought was true is false.

Yes, that works better for the piece. Perhaps some notes might be included for the uninitiated?

When/if I ever put together a chapbook I think that's an excellent idea. Maybe in the back, so as to let the piece stand on its own for a reader, initially.

Another pet project I have is a series of stories, and maybe poems, based on the major arcana and even some of the minor, like the Six of Swords.

You'd have an audience for that, given how so many people are into tarot. Could be your riposte to Eliot's Madame Sosostris.

Is it terrible that when I have a story concept, an audience never occurs to me? It's just the story.

Sorry if it cramps your style to think of those you might be writing for.. I wasn't trying to put you off, Heh Heh, honest to goodness...

Renee wrote: "When/if I ever put together a chapbook I think that's an excellent idea. Maybe in the back, so as to let the piece stand on its own for a reader, initially.

Another pet project I have is a series ..."?

And/or some illustrations, original if possible, would be very helpful and people like them.

I don't think it's terrible. You have to write what fascinates you. That write for an audience is for genre fiction. People want certain buttons pushed when they buy that.

That's true! Of course we have to be fascinated by our subjects; but sorry Kallie, I don't agree that writing to be read makes me - or most anyone - a genre writer. And I don't even accept that genre writers are only trying to push certain buttons.

If we wrote just to suit ourselves, we would be in danger of appealing only to the face we see in the mirror.

And surely, of the thousands of little decisions that go into every piece we write, at least some must be influenced by how we think our words and ideas will be perceived?

Philip wrote: "That's true! Of course we have to be fascinated by our subjects; but sorry Kallie, I don't agree that writing to be read makes me - or most anyone - a genre writer. And I don't even accept that gen..."

Oh, sure. But I'm not just talking about writing to be read, or caring about how we will be perceived so much as writing for an audience that is thought of as 'a market.'

I see a difference between writing for an audience, and appealing to fetishists. Do we reveal ourselves because it's cathartic..., or because we like a pat on the ass. Maybe a bit of both.

Is there communication if no-one's listening? If you're talking to yourself at least you have a captive audience....but, the critic's biased.

Then again,...bullshit walks, whiskey costs money. :}

It's wonderful when other people read what you've written, especially if it speaks to them, makes them think, have an emotional response, but I guess a better way to say what I meant is that even if no one else ever read anything I wrote I would still write what I write.

That frees me to follow the story.

Writing for an audience is neither lesser nor more. It's different. That's all.

Finding an audience is a long shot anyway, so I'll go with finding the story ;-)

Renee wrote: "Finding an audience is a long shot anyway, so I'll go with finding the story ;-) ..."

That is how I see it, and I figure that I am not so unusual a person that writing the story I care about won't resonate. What I mostly dislike and resist is someone saying: "Oh, there is no audience for what you are writing." (Who says?) "Write such and such instead" (I can't write that way.) This actually happened with a friend who writes mysteries. I don't think this attitude has served him too well as his books that weren't mysteries suited his style much better.

No doubt that contrivance diminishes a good storyteller. I'm trying to remember something I read attributed to Miles Davis. It was something like...."...a good musician can play what he hears in his head..., what makes a musician great is what he hears..".

I think he/she can be happy playing what he/she hears wherever he/she is. :}

You have to be true to the story or the story won't ring true.

You're absolutely right. But let me put it this way, Renee. You asked us all to pen a Halloween story. I immediately started to kick around a few ideas, in part excited by thoughts of you lot, who may be (if I ever write the piece) the only people who will ever read it. I think that's so cool when you know a group of people will take a bit of interest. It's also a two-way street, as I look forward to reading all your contributions.

That's one of the great things about a group like this, Philip :-)