Critiques and Commentaries

"Though St. John the Evangelist saw many strange monsters in his vision, he saw no creature so wild as one of his own commentators."--G.K. Chesterton

Hornets buzz in my blacked-out brain:
panicked, shrill, and harpy-sweet.
Hands clamp shoulders, press into stillness,
the motionless frenzy of deer before dogs
devour their entrails. 

I snatch bewildered maple seeds
 name them, squeeze my fists
 too tightly: the webbing tears. 

Two syllables as a question:
my name 
with the rising, falling he uses used.
I almost had his hand. 


almost  

A ton of feathers, 
too heavy, light,
blown apart in the breeze. 

Warm, clinging fingers wrap my wrist
,brushing the base of my thumb, afraid to hold
tighter lest I break and bruise.  My name—soft, like a prayer,
like he said it. Oh. Her. Pale, skittish, empty-eyed.
My chest tightens, accused by her resemblance. 

It’s no kindness, her comfort 
a black-edged telegram: cause of death
 accidental. Grant me gnawing guilt,
feast it with fire, anything but emptiness
and shared sorrow: stale snacks in
some psychoanalyst’s office.  

One of my classes this semester is Writing Capstone. It's meant to be the final class for writing and writing/literature majors, in which all your previous classes and work are drawn upon to produce the ultimate expression of your writing skill. So, no pressure there.  Because there are only five of us in this class, we all read and critique everyone else's work.  The above poem was my first piece written for this class.

What do you think it's about?

1. A romantic poem
2. A mental breakdown
3. A friend's death
4. I'm not sure

The "correct" answer, if one still believes that authorial intention is valid, is number three, a friend's death. Actually, it was mostly, if not entirely, based on the reaction of Eleven to the Ponds' departure in "Angels Take Manhattan" and John's response to Sherlock's fall in Reichenbach. Mostly the former, but some elements of the latter as well. The "she" in the last two verses is River, of course. I have complicated narrative headcanons for my poems, which are being removed during editing, but I just thought I'd share this. It was actually hilarious to me when we started critics, because all of the incorrect responses mentioned above were actual comments given by my peers. 

Commuter to Reality: Reality

"The best fantasy is written in the language of dreams. It is alive as dreams are alive, more real than real … for a moment at least … that long magic moment before we wake. Fantasy is silver and scarlet, indigo and azure, obsidian veined with gold and lapis lazuli. Reality is plywood and plastic, done up in mud brown and olive drab. Fantasy tastes of habaneros and honey, cinnamon and cloves, rare red meat and wines as sweet as summer.
Reality is beans and tofu, and ashes at the end. Reality is the strip malls of Burbank, the smokestacks of Cleveland, a parking garage in Newark. Fantasy is the towers of Minas Tirith, the ancient stones of Gormenghast, the halls of Camelot. Fantasy flies on the wings of Icarus, reality on Southwest Airlines. Why do our dreams become so much smaller when they finally come true?
We read fantasy to find the colors again, I think. To taste strong spices and hear the songs the sirens sang. There is something old and true in fantasy that speaks to something deep within us, to the child who dreamt that one day he would hunt the forests of the night, and feast beneath the hollow hills, and find a love to last forever somewhere south of Oz and north of Shangri-La. They can keep their heaven. When I die, I’d sooner go to Middle Earth."-
George R.R. Martin (paragraphs mine)

And that says it all. But in case you're intimidated by the long quote, let me state in the worlds of Owl City: "Reality is a lovely place, but I wouldn't want to live there."
Besides, if we're Christians, we should believe in another world, a reality beyond what we can see with our eyes. So why is it that only such a small box of writing is labeled "realistic?"

Commuter to Reality: 'Pulp Fiction'

Many--perhaps most--teachers of fiction writing do not accept manuscripts in genre, and I believe there's good reason for this, which is that wereas writing litary fiction can teach you how to write good genre fiction, writing genre fiction does not teach you to write good liteary fiction--does not, in effect, teach you "how to write," by which I mean how to be original and meaningful in words.--My textbook

I stumbled across this quote from the back of my textbook while glancing through it (finally arrived yesterday, much to my relief). Ironically, the professor mentioned the difference between genre fiction and "literature" in class today. Her points boiled down to:
1. Genre writing is plot-based, literary fiction is character-based.
2. Genre fiction does not have pyscological realism.
3. Genre fiction relies heavily on large, often unrealistic events.
At least, that's what I heard.

My response:
1. How do you show character except through events? Also, if you cannot take out the specific character and replace him without the plot collapsing, doesn't that imply a certian degree of character-basis?
2. To quote G.K. Chesterton's Orthodoxy/:

The fairy tale discusses what a sane man will do in a mad world. The sober realistic novel of to-day discusses what an essential lunatic will do in a dull world.

3. In certian worlds, big events may be quite reasonable.

And examples for all three (All from Doctor Who for consistancy)
1. The Doctor may enage in many adventures, but those adventures often stem from/are complicated by his nature. One episode that grows directly out of the Doctor's character is "Amy's Choice."
2. While no one now alive is responsible for the genocide of their home planet (we think), the Doctor shows the scars of that action even when he tries to hide it. One of the first things mentioned about him in the revived series comes in conversation with the Nestene Concious,

That's not true! I should know, I was there. I fought in the war. It wasn't my fault! I couldn't save your world! I couldn't save any of them!

3. In the Whoniverse, it is perfectly reasonable that aliens invade Earth (especially on Christmas) and are scared off by a screwdriver, because they know who they are facing.

Commuter to Reality: A Report from the Field

Here we are in the wilds of the web, attempting to track down an inspirus realisticus. Although I have an abundance of inspirus speculatus, my current sponser will only be satisfied with inspirus realisticus captured by outline summeries. This adds an additional level of difficultly, as I perfer the pantser ploy.
I began by inspecting older specimens of speculatus, hoping some of them had realisticus realitves. But this approach proved unsuccessful. My associates had no helpful hints for me, nor did my old records prove useful. I then attempted to search the forests of flickr for images of realisticus, but none of them leapt out at me, and I wish for a healthy specimen. I have also inspected dearblank and postsecret to no avail. I am currently seeking the audio realisticus, but time is running out, as my sponser requires proof of the beast's existance by Wednesday.

Commuter to Reality: Sparrow Syndrome and Pessimism

What's good about sad?
It's happy for deep people.
--Sally Sparrow, Blink

Well, judging from the first two class periods, "Writing of Fiction" will give me plenty of material for blog posts, if not short stories. The series will be titled Commuter to Reality, because my muse is going to have to come in from my wide imagination into the little corner of it that is considered reality.

The second part of the title, "Sparrow Syndrome," comes from the Doctor Who quote. Sometimes, you just want to watch Aslan's death or the montage at the end of the last Sarah Jane Adventure because you want to cry. (One reason why 'School Reunion' has become one of my favorite episodes since Elisabeth Sladen's death in April.) Part of it is the relief of taking off masks, acknowledging that everything is not okay. Sometimes it's realizing that other people have it worse, even if those other people are imaginary. Tearjerkers can even be heartwarming, like the very end of 'The Doctor, the Widow, and the Wardrobe.'

On the other hand, there are sad stories that are merely depressing. For class, I read a story called 'Balancing Act.' The professor says that she assigns us certian stories to let us know what she might be looking for. Well, this story doesn't exactly inspire confidence in any of my ideas. It's about a husband and wife who gradually drift apart. The last sentences convey the whole tone.

Each walked a tightrope of need. That single afternoon, she later decided, was what had kept them together for another three full years.

Woop-de-do. Life in grayscale with no real hope of color or even sepia tone isn't sad, it's depressing. If sadness is rain, then stories like that are the nasty, stinging perceptation--not snow, rain, or even sleet--that you can barely see but grinds your face like pebbles. Rain can be poetic. You can dance in rain, watch it come down, let it water your garden. There's nothing to be done with the stingy stuff but dart inside and get out of the way.

Cry, the Beloved Country

This the first, and perhaps the only, book that I first read in high school English and thoroughly enjoyed. This story of a South African black preacher, a white farmer and their sons tugged at my heart with its mournful, lyrical prose.

The pastor, or umfundisi, Stephan Kumalo, watches with resignation as his relatives leave their valley for the great city of Johannesburg. When a letter arrives telling of his sister's illness, Kumalo leaves for Johannesburg. Overwelmed by its noise and the massive crowds, he is shocked to find his sister had lived as a prostitute. But a deeper sorrow is yet to come when he learns of what his son, Absalom, has done.

From the first time I read of Kumalo's son, the name seemed to foreshadow some tragedy and death. Without spoiling the ending, I will say that Stephan's heart cries the refrain of David in II Samuel 18, "Oh, my son Absalom! My son, my son Absalom! If only I had died instead of you--oh Absalom, my son, my son!"

While I perfer fantasy books, this story carried the fantasy quality of transporting me to another place. I forgot about the classroom and my runny nose, caught up in the grief of two fathers over the loss of their sons. This is a book that could be placed in a time capsule for the 1940s.

Although the story highlights the unjustice of South Africa at the time, one phrase from Kumalo's prayer summerizes the cry of the story, "Forgive us all, for we all have trespasses."