A different type of challenge...

[Belegon]

It just came to me...

Ever feel like something has written itself? I was completely lost only a few hours ago. I did not know what poem I was using, no clue where to go with a story, anything. But it is done. I will try to rework it a bit over the next couple of days and tighten it up, but at least the basics are all there.

I managed to accomplish two things at once. I used characters from a previously written piece, Wingman. This allows me to not have to spend my normal 2000 words of introduction (yes, I tend towards being long-winded) and give an extra bit of attention to those characters, even doing a little personal wish fulfillment. If anyone has extra time, I think the "challenge" story will be better if you read the "prequel" first, but I tried to make it not necessary.

So I will meet the deadline after all...*whew!*

 

[Belegon]

Dancing Wildly

Dancing wildly
beneath the eclipse
of the October harvest moon.
I throw wide my arms
in worship,
drinking in the stillness.
The only music
plays in my heart,
and is accompanied
by crickets
and rustling grasses.
The only light
that of the stars.
The only audience
a startled rabbit
who fled at my approach.
To untrained eyes
I seem to dance alone,
but whenever
I dance,
in noise
or silence,
you will be there.



On the drive over, I only hoped the day would be something special. So much time had passed. I mean, I knew we would have fun. Kris and I have it hit it off well ever since the first night we met.

That first weekend had been glorious in it’s own way, but I never thought it would be anything more than just a weekend. She went back to her world at U.N.I. and I stayed in mine. I thought about her, especially since Jason would not let it rest, but I let my own insecurities talk me into believing that it had been nothing more than an extended one night stand. I mean, she was really out of my league. I’m all right looking but Kris is gorgeous. Once she got back to Waterloo the guys would be all over her and I would become a footnote.

So the first letter was a surprise. I practically ran back to my room to read it, forgetting to act cool and unconcerned. I read it three times in an hour, wrote back to her that same day, and that started things on a new level. I wanted to visit her as soon as I knew she would welcome the visit, but things kept getting in the way. Between baseball season and finals, I never managed to get out to see her. Still, we talked and I made plans to stay in Iowa over the summer instead of going home.

Then the unimaginable happened. The Texas Rangers drafted me in the 19th round. I signed, of course. How could I give up that dream? I was sent to the short-season Spokane Indians in Washington and that was the end of my summer plans. Kris was disappointed, but she understood. By the time the season was over, it was back to school. I was a couple weeks late, but Coach Rima pulled some strings and the school was proud of my success, so I was OK. But my first few weekends were spent catching up.

Kris understood everything, but when we talked she also had that tone that let me know I had probably already blown it. Still, the chemistry between us was such that I had to try. Plus, you can never tell with her. She is so sarcastic, and without her eyes to try and catch a twinkle or that little smile, I could not tell what was serious and what was a joke.

As I pulled up in front of her dorms the radio started playing Aerosmith’s new song, something like “There goes my old girlfriend…” I prayed it was not being prophetic.

I knocked on the door and Debbie answered. She gave a little screech and hugged me tight, and suddenly I felt better about my chances. But Kris was not there. Just a note and some directions to a spot down by the river. A little side road off of the 218. I knew it meant she was up to something, but Debbie was not giving it up. I headed back to the car with a mixture of fear and anticipation. Getting me away from people meant one of two things. This was going to turn out either very good or very bad.

I parked the car on the edge of the dirt road and headed through the trees like the note said. I knew she would have heard the car and would know I was coming.

“Kris?”

“Here Will, over here.”

I turned to my left as I emerged from the tree cover and saw her for the first time in six months. My heart caught as I realized that no picture could capture how I really felt about her looks. She had the classic farmers daughter style thing going, cut off shorts and a shirt tied up to bare her navel. I had forgotten somehow…

“I’ve been waiting Will. Six fucking months I’ve been waiting. And even for this you’re late!” She spun around and showed me her back. Uh oh. This is not starting well.

“Kris, come on! You leave me a note and directions to someplace I have never been to in a city I have never visited? I was on time to the dorms! How was I supposed to know I was coming out here?” I reached up to put my hand on her shoulder as I pleaded that last, hoping I could calm her down. It played right into her hands.

It took me a moment to realize what was happening as I tumbled forward onto the grass. Then she was on top of me, laughing. I had fallen for it. She wasn’t angry. Her lips sought mine and proved it. Suddenly I was kissing her once again and I knew that I had been wrong. The magic of that first night was still there.

She had brought a picnic lunch, but it was forgotten. I kissed my way around her face and neck before slipping down to untie the country fashion statement of her shirt and burying my face in her breasts. The pink tips of them shuddered as I pulled them deep into my mouth. I pulled off her shorts to discover she had been planning for exactly this to happen. No panties to go with no bra. I pulled my own shirt off over my head, kicked off my shoes and slipped out of my jeans. Both of us naked in the open on an Indian summer afternoon. Part of me wanted to take it slow. That part lost out as she attacked me and I responded. We tore into each other with a desperate abandon, letting our inner animals take over for this first time in so very long. The second time was gentler, and more loving.

We made love three times that afternoon. No one disturbed us and we never even heard a car. The last time I memorized every instant as I stared up at her silhouetted against the fading light, breasts bouncing as she rode me, her mouth gasping for air just before she collapsed on my chest as her arms gave out and her legs straightened beneath her with the force of her orgasm.

Afterwards, we lay in the grass and just talked for a couple of hours. We finally got to the picnic basket, and if the wine was a little warm, well, it didn’t really matter. As the dark of the night deepened, we finally packed everything up and got in the car to head back to her campus.

It was so hard to say goodbye. It was well after midnight when we finally parted, and I had been kissing her goodnight for at least an hour. But I had to get back to school. I needed to graduate this winter so I could go to Arizona for spring training in February.

I’m halfway back to Dubuque when I feel the need for a different kind of release, a need to celebrate. So I pull the car over next to an already harvested field, turn it off and walk away from the road, into the field. I throw my arms wide as I scream my love into the night sky. Afraid to believe in my own triumph, but knowing it is real, I understand why man invented music.

Sometimes you just have to dance.


(number of words = 1231)

 

[BooMerengue]

Hey everyone! Tomorrows the day to post your stories. Here's how it should be done...

poem {


story {


Number of words- STORY ONLY! (XXX)


Thanks!

 

[Belegon]

Sorry I jumped the gun everybody

I'm on vacation and the days kinda blended together on me...

 

[Angeline]

Poem came first

Pyewacket Girl

Pyewacket girl lives.

You can be her familiar,
but don’t get too close.

She winds her way in limber slink
through alleyways and cityscapes
to soft October nights that linger
winding round a house once,
like yellow smoke.

Pyewacket girl lives in a tumble
of pumpkins and McCoun apples,
bright days, cloudless crisp,
then the moon rises full
on the sap of your desire.


Pyewacket girl lives
in peeping feline eyes. She
shifts the stars. She stretches lean
and softs one delicate paw,
attenuated like shadow.

The night twirls
and she tips past alleys
finds you, rubs your ankles,
licks your chest.

Meow.

Now tell me you’re not charmed?
Tell me hoo possesses hoo?

Then I wrote the story.

Pyewacket Days

Word Count:
2273 words. (Well, I wrote it long before the challenge...)

 

[Remec]

Here we go...<smile>

Passionate Obsession

Red
His eyes feasted on the colour of it
How it flowed
ran down her slender throat
seeped into the pink chiffon of her prom dress
Beautiful
His fingers thrilled to the feel of it
Warm and magical
in contrast to her flesh
quickly taking on the spring night's chill
Wondrous
His heart raced at the thrill of it
The sudden shock
her trusting eyes' vacant stare
blonde hair floating on the crimson pool
Entrancing
His mind imagined the end of it
Drying in the air
becoming black and sticky
stopping with the heart's slow fading away
Disgusting
His tongue quivered at the taste of it
When he'd cleaned his hands
washed and stowed the knives and ropes
and kissed her sweetly on her scarlet lips
Lovingly




“What’ve ya got?” Terry Hansom asked his partner. He passed the beam from his flashlight over across the darkened warehouse. It was probably nothing, he thought to himself, busybodies calling in petty vandalisms all night long. You’d think no one had heard of tricks on Halloween.

Ahead of him, in the dark, he could just make out the silhouette of Alex Taylor. No one made the mistake of calling her Alexandra more than once. She was turned obliquely away from him. If the flashlight hadn’t reflected off her silky blonde hair, he might’ve mistook her for one of the mannequins jutting up here and there among the debris and left behind crates and forgotten filing cabinets.

The report had said the warehouse was abandoned. It seemed more like neglected, but still used by someone for storing things in. The place was dusty, with more than a few cobwebs in the corners and covering bits of broken window. “So, find anything? Taylor?”

Officer Hansom rounded the last little bend of boxes and stacked papers to see what his partner was so riveted by. The circle of light flowed over the uneven surfaces of more storage bins and drawers and then fell across Alex’ form. She stood between him and what she’d found. Her body threw a great human shadow across a more three-dimensional shade that hung on the wall before them.

“Oh, fuck.”

**********

The little sobbing whimpers had finally ceased he noted as he reentered the workspace. This was a good thing, since too much crying always messed up how things looked. It wasn’t that he didn’t mind the occasional retouching, mind you; but it was always better to have to apply makeup just the one time.

He smiled at how nicely the lipstick she was wearing matched her hair and dress. The limited light in the workspace sometimes made colors not look quite right, but the deep scarlet had just the perfect tone to it for bringing out the redness in the pink of her dress.

He watched how the dress moved with her slow breathing. Each time her chest rose, the dress crested slightly, and her gently heaving cleavage threatened to spill out of the bodice’s barely there grip and reveal the similar (but different) pink of her erect nipples. Thinking of the time spent arousing her to that point made him lick his lips and smile again.

“Well…mustn’t keep you waiting, eh?” he asked. The lack of an answer didn’t surprise him in the least. Stepping over to the old desk nearest to the workspace, he opened a side drawer and drew out a small black box. It was about a hand’s width by a hand and a half, and flat…not even as thick as a phone book.

He carefully pried the lid off. It wouldn’t do to rush, after all. Rushing leads to all sorts of problems. He might very well crease the edges or corners of the box’ lid, if he rushed, that is. And that would never do.

“Hmm, decisions, decisions…” he said as he perused the open box. “This one should do nicely. To start with, that is,” he added as he removed an immaculate filleting knife and held it up for her to see.

“Shall we begin then?”

**********

Amber laughed as she pirouetted in front of the large mirror outside the ballroom. She hadn’t thought her old prom dress would even fit her still, but it did. Barely, she had had a lot less bust back then and…from the way it hung about her knees…she apparently had gained some height as well.

She wasn’t quite sure how or when that had happened. High school had only been a couple of years ago, but Mama had always told her she was a late bloomer, so perhaps she’d come into a growth spurt through those years and just never noticed until now.

She pivoted a bit back and forth, seeing how well it swayed with her. Amber hoped her friends would be easy to find. She thought she was going to have to work, but she’d gotten out early, pulled out the dress as a last minute costume, and scurried off to catch up with everyone.

Naturally, that meant that everyone had been on the ball and left on time for once.

“Oh well,” she said with a small sigh. “At least, if they check their voice mail, they’ll spot me. How many Cinderellas could there be at a Halloween party?” As Amber double-checked her makeup in the mirror, her eyes met the gaze of a man in dark clothes.

He seemed to be in a suit several generations, if not centuries, out of date. A short capelike jacket hung about his shoulders, his arms jutting forth from within its folds. He held a small black bag. Amber saw how he was watching her and laughed. Looking at him in the mirror, she shrugged and said, “I know, I know. Hardly the scariest thing out there, am I? But I look cute, right?”

Amber giggled. She puckered her full lips, and tried to decide from her reflection if she needed to add lipstick or not. A suddenly very close voice said, “Actually, you are quite lovely.” She lifted her eyes to smile and say thank you but saw nothing but a black-gloved hand holding a small handkerchief. The soft cloth was closed about Amber’s nose and mouth and she collapsed against the rough wool and leather outfit the man wore.

“Indeed, you are quite, quite lovely,” he said as he scooped her into his arms. He cradled her against his chest and leaned down to kiss her cheek.

"I've always thought so," he whispered.

{Words=951}
{Note: I hadn't ever realized this poem isn't quite submitted correctly, I went ahead and typed it in the way it should look, but that doesn't always seem to work around here.<g>}

 

[BooMerengue]

ohhh these are so good. And mine's not half done... *groaning and banging head on desk...bang! bang! bang!

 

[BooMerengue]

Blood On The Moon


There's blood on the moon tonight.
I watched as it rose between the blue hills,
the mist running before it.

There's blood on the moon tonight.
I prayed as it rose
that my loved ones would be spared.

There's blood on the moon tonight.
Wringing my hands to wash out the sins
as I walked in its obliterating path...


Cady pulled her cape over her nakedness and hurriedly slipped on her boots. Grabbing Maisie by the hand she began to run down the path to her cabin. It was the September equinox and even though she had pulled Maisie into the Circle and called down all the Ancestors to protect her daughter, she had a deepening fear she was going to have to do something herself.

The mist was thick tonight, and chilly. She could barely make out the shape of her cabin and cursed under her breath. The moon was full but hidden from view by the thick cloud cover.

Reaching the porch she rushed Maisie in front of her and quickly lit a lantern. Pushing the door open she went and stirred the fire. Soon a warm glow filled the small rooms and Maisie
brought her some towels. Cady pulled her daughters clothes off and began to towel her dry. Pulling a gown over Maisies head, she led her to the bed, and tucked her in. In an instant the girl was asleep.

The teakettle began to whistle so Cady fixed her tea and carried it to the rocker near the fire. She still had the residue of her Ritual singing in her veins. But the fears she had been experiencing for the last week had only heightened. She closed her eyes and settled back in her chair, her mind whirling.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

It was last Saturday night. Maisie was late getting home. She had walked down the mountain to Brewster's Store to drop off the cornhusk dolls and woodcarvings she had made for Mrs Brewster to enter in the Craft Show. Her work was exquisite and brought a fine price.

Usually she was home before dark, but not this night. Cady had feelings. Not good ones, so she grabbed her cape off the peg and a lantern and started walking down the trail. She hadn't gone far when she heard sounds coming from the bushes. Terrified, she pushed the leaves aside and found Maisie, her clothing torn and her face bloodied. Knowing instantly why
she had felt like she did, Cady gathered her daughter up and helped her back up the trail.

When they reached the bathroom Cady knew her worst fears had been realized. Her daughter had been raped and beaten. While she bathed and changed her daughter, she sang to
her, as she had always done when Maisie was frightened. This time was different, though. Maisie always told her what was wrong, and together they overcame it.

Maisie was different from the other kids early on. She learned to read and write and do her Math in the Second grade. Maisie wasn't stupid as people thought. She just preferred the company of the creatures atop the mountain. When refused to return for the Third grade Cady didn't make her go. That was eight years ago. Maisie was 15 now. They lived alone near the top of the mountain, and no body bothered them. The teachers were afraid of them both; superstition died hard even down below in the valley, and Cady was a Hawkrider. That family had been strange for generations. They had the Sight; they knew how things were before anyone else, and preferred to keep to themselves. So the townspeople obliged.

It was the Sight that let Cady know something was wrong. Tonight when she looked into the fire she could see what had happened, and knew it would happen again. She knew now she
had to do something about it.

Rising from her rocker she went to the back porch. There in a bag she had a cap and a few cigarette butts. The cap belonged to Bod Darby, and the cigarettes were Luke Hammond's.

The two boys were inseparable; seniors in high school and top athletes, they were the cream of the crop around here. Both handsome, and from well off families, they had grown up knowing they could do no wrong. And flirting with Maisie was what they did when they were bored. They hung around Brewster's Store waiting for something to come along to break their boredom, and Maisie's beauty and aloofness had whetted their appetites. She never spoke to them, only smiling when they said hi and going on her way. That wasn't how the other girls in town acted around these two, and it was a bit more than they could understand.

Saturday afternoon when Maisie brought her basket of crafts to the Store they were there. As usual she didn't speak to them and when she left they followed her. It was about three hours later when Cady found her bruised and bleeding, trying to crawl home.

That night, after Maisie had fallen to sleep, Cady went back down the mountain and found the clearing where the boys had awaited Maisie. She looked around and found the cap and
cigarette butts, and a fruit jar of 'shine, half emptied.. Gathering everything she found and leaving no trace of anyone's having been there, she hurried back up the mountain.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Shaking herself from her reverie Cady went and stirred the fire. She cleared the floor in front of it, and taking her athame from the mantel she scribed a circle around her. Standing silent she began to pray. Her voice filled the room as a low murmur but soon it sounded as if many women were whispering the same thing over and over.

"The full moon high, the day is through.
Thy will be done We work through You."

Maisie whimpered in her sleep but never woke as Cady reached for the bag at her feet and brought out the cap and cigarette butts. As she pulled each item from the bag the whispery voices in the room got louder, but Cady's lips were sealed shut in a grim frown.

She squatted on the floor still inside her circle and using her double bladed knife drew a circle around each boys belongings. As she scribed the arc she muttered "A youth destroyed calls for another youth destroyed. May the Earth always be inbalance." And with that utterance she stabbed the cap. Muttering the same prayer a second time she again stabbed the pile of cigarette butts.

As she stood and raised her arms to The Goddess the fire flared and the voices rose again. Looking closely it was as if blood were running down Cady's arms. Once more she chanted...

"The full moon high, the day is through.
Thy will be done We work through You."


As she turned in the opposite direction and opened her circle again, she could hear the whispers fading. Throwing the boy's things into the fire she at last knew satisfaction, and glancing at Maisie, she knew the girl slept peacefully for the first time in a week.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

It was a beautiful fall afternoon Tuesday when Sheriff Howard pulled his pickup into the yard. Cady was on the porch and invited him to have a seat. He sat on the top step and sighed. "Ms Hawkrider, I got two teenagers turned up dead and I can't find a single clue as to why. Seems for no reason Bod Darby drove his truck right off Indian Nob. Both he and Jared Hammond's boy, Luke, were killed. I guess you haven't seen anything, have you?" Cady smiled at the Sheriffs discomfort. He was one of those who disbelieved in the Sight, though he didn't
hesitate to come see her when he had a real puzzler on his hands.

"Would you like a drink?" Cady offered in her soft voice. When he nodded, she passed him a fruit jar, and he took a big swallow. After staring off into the mist climbing up the mountain, she shook her head. "Sorry Sheriff. I don't see anything. These days with Ma and Pa gone it's just me and Maisie up here on this ol' mountain. We don't hear much from down the valley." The Sheriff waited a moment, and then started down the steps toward his truck.
"You'd tell me if you knew anything, wouldn't you, Cady?" Cady sat and rocked a moment and then smiled. "You be careful goin down that road this time of day, Sheriff. These turns are
mighty tricky in this light."

(1381)

 

[BlackShanglan]

ohhh these are so good. And mine's not half done... *groaning and banging head on desk...bang! bang! bang!

Go read something of mine. The miserable quality will make you feel better We all have a role to play in life; mine happens to be "there but for the grace of God go I."

I am enjoying your poems and your stories. I am in the midst of drafting some responses to the ones already up so that they don't all sneak up on me at once. Boo, when were you hoping for us to have all of the responses made?

Best to you all -

Shanglan

 

[BooMerengue]

Hey, Shanglan!

Everyone has til Midnight tonight (it's 9:55pm Central Standard Time here) to post their stories so anytime after that. It looks to me though like a few have decided not to post, for whatever reason. We'll just have to wait and see.

Thanks for your interest.

 

[GingerV]

I've gleefully copied out all the entries...and I'm off to curl up with a glass of wine and a pile of paper. I'll get back here with comments tonight with any luck!

G

 

[BlackShanglan]

Responses to poems and stories ...

Response to Poem/Story Pairings
(In order of submission)

Greeting poets. I just wanted to thank BooMerengue for inviting us “story people” over to play and all of you for letting me enjoy your poems and your stories. I’m fascinated by the exercise and by my own response to it. Part of me believes in the old New Critical “heresy of paraphrase” and felt quite resistive to the idea that a poem could be improved by a prose story attached to it. But in reading these stories, I have realized what a vast difference there is between a prose commentary (which, when attached to a poem, is almost inevitably an admission of failure, and I say this *as* a failure myself ) and a story, which you have jointly shown me can be a fascinating extension of the artistic act. Kudos to BooMerengue for coming up with the idea. My comments below are a bit schizoid due to being written in the spare moments of some busy days, but I tried to stick to saying what worked in terms of the challenge: showing me better where the poem came from.


Belegon: Dancing Wildly
I enjoyed both the poem and the story. The author has done well translating the essentially lyric burden of the poem to a quick narrative that hits all of the high notes of the relationship in a pleasantly breathless embodiment of the excitement.

I quite loved this image; it captures the feeling in a nice, concrete way:

So the first letter was a surprise. I practically ran back to my room to read it, forgetting to act cool and unconcerned. I read it three times in an hour, wrote back to her that same day …

I probably could have stood not having the whole detail of the baseball summer; that is, I sense that it was a very significant part of the author’s life, but there is so little space in 1500 words … I’m not sure that you can do justice to a second dream that needs chasing (in addition to Kris) other than to go the minimalist route of just saying that other dreams conflicted. But I get it

I like the introduction of Kris’s secret plans – that really comes through with its emotional impact, letting the reader sense your anticipation mingling with apprehension. It sets me up for the release that the poem told me would be coming, and for the humor in her toying with the speaker. I like the return, too, to the image of the first night; that mingles well with the poem’s sense that the emotion is present within, not reliant on the loved one’s presence in the physical sense. The sex is handled nicely for so compact a story, and the emotional depth really comes through. There are some nice evocative phrases as well – “Both of us naked in the open on an Indian summer afternoon,” “I had been kissing her goodnight for at least an hour” – that give a simple power of meaning.

This did a great job of explaining the genesis of the poem and made me appreciate it in a new way. I had read the poem initially as more of a general statement of romantic attachment; the added specifics of the events, both physical and emotional, greatly heightened my understanding of the poem and added a concrete and earthy chord that I quite enjoyed. The story does a great job of bridging between a more ethereal sense of passion and the warm and human reality of sex.

Remec: Passionate Obsession

I liked the sort of “Porphyria’s Lover” feel of the poem, so I was looking forward to the story. I like the way that Remec decided to switch point of view with the story; I think it goes with the spirit of expanding on the poem and showing us something new to illuminate it. Similarly, I enjoyed the sort of film noir pastiche of the cops; it made me smile, and I found myself picturing it all in black and white, with trenchcoats …

The circle of light flowed over the uneven surfaces of more storage bins and drawers and then fell across Alex’ form.

Perhaps I have spent too much of the day analyzing literature already, but I saw a connection here to the flowing blood and hair of the poem that made these a lot of fun to read together. I was prepared for a story that would extend the thematic elements of the poem, but I was surprised and intrigued by this effective repetition of stylistic elements. It’s a great choice that emphasizes the physical elements of the original piece.

Her body threw a great human shadow across a more three-dimensional shade that hung on the wall before them.

Another great visual image that connects with the powerful physical sense of the poem. Remec is playing to his strengths here, and doing a nice job of it. Personally, I am of the opinion that form, style, and meaning cannot be disentangled from each other, so this undercurrent of shadowy movement and flowing, amorphous dangers is to me a delicious extension and expansion of the poem.

I like the break to the next point of view; the voice changes well, and again catches the way in which the poem swings from more objective to subjective voice and POV. The details of makeup and dress give a nicely creepy, finicky touch to the character that expands his characterization from the poem. I particularly enjoyed getting enough into his head to read the blurring of fear and desire into a single rubric of arousal. This snapshot of how he sees her strained breath as he prepares to kill her gives good depth to his character.

I also very much like the reverse chronological order of revelation. This was a nice choice both in terms of tensions in the story itself and with an eye to its role as a companion piece to the poem. Remec deals nicely with the question of how to handle suspense when the results are known; the tension at the end comes through beautifully, precisely because we’ve already seen the end.

He seemed to be in a suit several generations, if not centuries, out of date. A short capelike jacket hung about his shoulders, his arms jutting forth from within its folds. He held a small black bag.

The sort of thing one might choose to wear, say, Whitechapel, late 1800’s?

On the whole this story did very well expanding and elucidating the poem. The one point on which I could not come to a conclusion was the ending, where it seems that she knows her killer. I’m torn there. On the one hand, it gives a nice thrill of horror to realize that she’s been taken in by someone she evidently trusted. On the other hand, it leaves me rather teased on the topic of how he’s managed to hide his unfortunate habits from her, whether this is a one-off or a pattern, how he knows her, if his passion is rooted in a relationship or if she’s just been chosen from the start as a pigeon, etc. I recognize that the author's purpose may very well be to tease in such a fashion; however, I’m not sure that on the whole this might not have been more satisfying with just a whisper more on how these two came into contact with each other and just how deeply his plans were laid.

BooMerengue: Blood On The Moon

Tough call on the opening vocabulary. On the one hand, I am thoroughly with you on the idea that one’s opening paragraph should provide questions rather than answers and should pique rather than flatly inform. On the other hand, I have a dreadful habit of assigning a sort of “white noise” to words or concepts I don’t understand … they’re like voids in the text. And I had several voids in the first paragraph with the Circle and the Ancestors and the “something happening” feeling. I found it a touch difficult to get hold of. Fortunately, I can see the swift tie to the poem in the idea of the moon and the cyclical patterns of the equinoxes, so I am encouraged

The backstory gets more clear in the flashback, and I appreciate the focus on feeling and internal reaction. I also like your repetition of certain key anchor elements – moon, mist, cloak, blood. One slight difficulty that does arrive from the conjunction of these techniques, however, is some difficulty knowing for sure when the events are happening. In the midst of the first flashback section, I started to become confused about time frames and wondered if I was misreading it or if you’d meant to toy with my perceptions of time and move back to the present.

I like the sense of the family with their gift of the Sight and the isolation, half desired, half imposed. There’s a nice ambiguous feel to it that reminds me of the feel of the mountains themselves – beautiful, appealing in many ways, but also a dangerous place not to be underestimated. This seems to fit in well with the poem’s sense of both beauty and foreboding.

Good set up with the collection of the items from the boys. It reminds me a bit of Naylor’s “Mama Day.” I enjoy the tension being instilled here. It’s also a good reminder to me that the poem has that interesting last stanza. Initially I read the poem as being mostly about a sense of worry and foreboding, but this story is making me re-assess it. Yes, there’s blood on the moon, but it doesn’t say whose … and “I prayed my loved ones would be spared” is now starting to sound more like a grim sort of “I hoped I wouldn’t have to do this” rather than a simple defeated cry of fear or pain. I’m definitely getting a “grittier” feel from it, and I like this new perspective.

Her voice filled the room as a low murmur but soon it sounded as if many women were whispering the same thing over and over.

I like that image – that sense that her power comes from her connection with others, perhaps living, perhaps past generations … that sense of communality. It’s especially effective as the voices continue even once Cady’s lips are closed. This is a good evocation of a sense of magic and power – concrete, simple, and powerful.

When he nodded, she passed him a fruit jar, and he took a big swallow.

Nice sly little touch I like Cady’s sphinx-like smile at the end, her quiet refusal to be drawn.

This is another great use of the story to illuminate and extend the poem. It was particularly interesting to me because of the very terse and lyrical focus of the poem. What intrigued me was the way that this additional information on the roots of the mood the poem attempts to evoke led me to re-assess the mood itself. On the whole it made me blush rather, as I realized that I ought to have given the poem more thought from the first. Not that I imagine I should have looked at the poem and seen the story you give, but that I should have seen earlier the strength in the speaker in the poem. I liked that the story showed me this, as I find that I enjoy the poem much more from this perspective. It’s strange … on the whole I much prefer the poem in execution, but without the story I did not see the depths of the poem. I think that this must be a confession of my failure as a reader, for which I must apologize. But I am grateful to have had the story lead me to a better understanding of the verse.


Thank you all again. I enjoyed this immensely, and found myself very pleasantly surprised by the extent to which my perceptions were challenged, expanded, and made more enjoyable through the combination of the poems and the stories. Perhaps this sort of dual arrangement is a form whose time has come!

All the best -

Shanglan

 

[Angeline]

Re: Responses to poems and stories ...

Response to Poem/Story Pairings
(In order of submission)

Greeting poets. I just wanted to thank BooMerengue for inviting us “story people” over to play, and all of you for letting me enjoy your poems and your stories. I’m fascinated by the exercise, and by my own response to it. Part of me believes in the old New Critical “heresy of paraphrase” and felt quite resistive to the idea that a poem could be improved by a prose story attached to it. But in reading these stories, I have realized what a vast difference there is between a prose commentary (which, when attached to a poem, is almost inevitably an admission of failure, and I say this *as* a failure myself ) and a story, which you have jointly shown me can be a fascinating extension of the artistic act. Kudos to BooMerengue for coming up with the idea. My comments below are a bit schizoid due to being written in the spare moments of some busy days, but I tried to stick to saying what worked in terms of the challenge: showing me better where the poem came from.

All the best –

Shanglan

....................

What am I? Chopped Liver?

click on the link to read the story

 

[dr_mabeuse]

I've written some poetry and I've written fiction, but until I started reading these poems and stories I really hadn’t appreciated just how profoundly different the two genres are in terms of intent and effect and overall strategy. Thelonius Monk said that writing about music was like dancing about architecture, and I think something like that is going on here as well. A poem is not just a story with a lot of fancy images and most of the words missing, and a story is not just a poem with all the details filled in. In fact, it seems to me now that the only thing they have in common is the use of language to do what they do. Everything else about them is different. I think now it would be easier to paint a picture about a poem than it would be to write a story about it (Angeline seems to have done just that and pretty successfully, I think).

I thought Belegon’s story was the most ‘literary’ or story-ish, the most capable of standing alone, and that’s probably because of the amount of history he put into it. But at the same time, after a first reading I didn’t feel it quite captured the feel of the poem. That’s because on my first reading I took the poem to be about erotic desire and expectation, not about erotic satisfaction. I had to read it a couple more times to see it as celebratory rather than as invocative, and, to be honest, the mood of erotic celebration is not one I’m accustomed to in poetry, at least, not like this. Dancing under the moon seems more in keeping with casting spells than with post-sexual celebration. Plus, there’s something a little disconcertingly “Wooo! I just got laid!” about it.

Still, his story does a very good job of describing and explicating the meaning and mood of the poem. As I say, had I not read the story, I would have taken the poem to be one of sheer auto-erotic celebration: the sexuality of nature. It was only after the story that I realized he was dancing out of joy of sex.

I thought Angeline did a very good job of catching the spirit of her poem in her story. I’m very partial to both her story and her poem because I’m convinced now that the feelings that poetry invokes in me are all essentially erotic, and her poem and story were the most overtly and frankly sexual. Those feelings of mystery in the night and the light of the moon--cats and magic and spells and strangers in the city--all strike me as very sexual, and it’s a theme I never seem to get tired of. Power and mystery are sexual feelings, and sex and sexual attraction are one of the few places left in our lives where we still recognize the workings of mystery and magic. It’s an idea I play with over and over again myself when I write, and really, if there’s a non-erotic dimension to porn, that’s it: the intrusion of the transcendent force of sex into our lives.

I loved the sex. I love hot, mindless, got-to-have-you sex, and I loved the language and the rhythm of the prose during the sex. I loved her quaking in the moonlight and the Son and the slurp. (The slurp I understand, but what the hell’s a Son?) I love that stuff.

My only problem was that, as with all of these stories, as stories I wanted them to be more like extensions of the poems. There’s a loss of magic that happens when you have to take these emotions and images from the poems abd turn them into mundance actions. I don’t think there’s anything that can be done about that though. That’s what I mean about the difference between poetry and prose.

I was going to recuse myself from Remec’s entry entirely, because I really just don’t care for butchery. I thought his poem was lovely because there’s enough ambiguity to allow us to escape having to face the literality of what the poem is really saying--the horror of a woman’s being murdered and probably dissected. And so the story, as beautifully written as it was (and it was) was a complete turn-off to me. I recognize the poetic power of linking sex and blood, but I think it’s always something that’s best hinted at and left to the subconcious to deal with. Making it explicit strips it of its power and mystery and, for me at least, makes it simply vile. I’ve come to an age where I simply don’t read things that turn me off anymore.

Content aside—I may be allowed to do that--I will say that I found the iamgery striking and the way the story was structured to be quite brilliant, on a first reading at least. But then I read it again and realized that the girl at the start (Alex) is not the same as the girl at the end (Amber) and so now I’m totally bewildered as to what it all means.

In any case, I had to read it with jaws clenched, which is not the way I like to appraoch fiction. I don’t like bestiality and I don’t like scat and pedophilia and I don’t like blood and snuff. I especially don’t like seeing women in terror. I must be the wimpiest BDSM author on the planet, but there you have it. So, as I say, maybe I should have recused myself

The same kind of thing but on a much lower level happened for me in Boo’s story. I found the poem lovely and evocative, but a lot of the power and majic were lost when the specifics were spelled out in the story. “Blood on the moon” is a powerful image, haunting and majestic, but rape is dirty and vile, and the mood of the poem versus the story just aren’t the same.

It’s not that there was anything wrong with the story. It’s just that so much of a poem’s power resides in its ambiguity. It’s kind of like enjoying the Mona Lisa and then reading one of those pieces that are so common these days attributing her smile to some medical condition, like gas or hemmorhoids.

I would make the argument too, that while all four poems seemed very erotic on their own, only Angeline’s story retained that eroticism. Belegon’s was more a stoiry of falling in love, Remec’s was erotic horror, and Boo’s was about magical revenge. I found that kind of surprising.

In the end I think we’re left with the difference between poetry, which is invocatory, and fiction, which is largely explanatory. That’s not to say that there aren’t narrative poems or poetic stories, but by and large their intents and techniques are entirely different.

I want to thank you for letting me participate in this little exercise too. It’s been tremendously educational for me.

---dr.M.

 

[Angeline]

Hi there Doc. Nice to see you in the poetry forum again. Thank you a) for including me in the same post as Thelonious Monk (wonderful quote, btw), and b) for the nice things you said about my story. I think it worked because I wrote the poem and thought there was more in it, then a few months later I did the story.

It was, by the way, sort of a rip off of the film Bell, Book, and Candle--which I've always loved (everyone in it is wonderful). I pornogrified James Stewart and Kim Novak, I suppose.

And Son is traditional Cuban guitar music, best exemplified by the old boys of the Buena Vista Social Club. I was listening to that a lot at the time I wrote the story, and it crept in there.

 

[dr_mabeuse]

Hi there Doc. Nice to see you in the poetry forum again. Thank you a) for including me in the same post as Thelonious Monk (wonderful quote, btw), and b) for the nice things you said about my story. .

No fair thanking the critics! Speaking for myself, I'm embarassingly bribable and it doesn't take much.

I never saw Bell Book & Candle, but somewhere along the way I picked up the name of her familiar and I recognized it. But of course, Jimmy Stewart and Kim Novak were the last ones I would think of in this scenario. More like John Cusack and Kirsten Dunst with red hair.

There's a lot about this exercise I'm not clear about, and one of the things I was wondering was whether you guys had the stories or scenes specifically in mind when you wrote the poems, or whether you went back and tried to capture the mood and feeling of the poem in a newly-created story. I'm guessing the latter.

---dr.M.

 

[Angeline]

No fair thanking the critics! Speaking for myself, I'm embarassingly bribable and it doesn't take much.

I never saw Bell Book & Candle, but somewhere along the way I picked up the name of her familiar and I recognized it. But of course, Jimmy Stewart and Kim Novak were the last ones I would think of in this scenario. More like John Cusack and Kirsten Dunst with red hair.

There's a lot about this exercise I'm not clear about, and one of the things I was wondering was whether you guys had the stories or scenes specifically in mind when you wrote the poems, or whether you went back and tried to capture the mood and feeling of the poem in a newly-created story. I'm guessing the latter.

---dr.M.

If you noticed, I named the man in my story Tom Stewart (a private joke between me and me at the time of the writing), but I couldn't use Kim or Novack, not witchy enough...

I think it would be harder to write a story and then come up with a poem that captures its essence. That may be me, though--I've been writing mostly poetry for so long now that I think in poem before prose. What do you think people who are primarily story writers? Would it be easier to write a poem based on a story than the other way round?

 

[Varian P]

Hi all.

Thanks to BooMerengue for coming up with such an interesting challenge, to Dr. Mabeuse for bringing me across the border into the world of Literotica poetry, and to all you poets/storytellers for offering up your works. Personally, I find this kind of inter-genre experiment fascinating, and I'm thrilled to be taking part.

Having finished my critiques I've snuck a quick peek at what some others have said, and I think dr. M. is on to something with his assessment of the tremendous breach between prose and poetry. However (and I say this without knowing any of your backgrounds¡Xmaybe all of you have been writing stories for years), it occurs to me that writing poetry is, in addition to its inherent value, probably excellent practice for writing concise, evocative prose, as all of your stories would seem to demonstrate.

That said, I confess I'm no expert on poetry, so please forgive any failures on my part to comprehend the intentions of the poems and/or the connections between the poems and the stories.

Belegon,

Your poem and story were the first that I read, and though I wasn't sure just what to expect, I was quite impressed. I suppose I imagined that the stories would in effect rehash the content of the poem, but in this case the story served beautifully to fill out the back-story, telling me what events led up to that moment of "Dancing Wildly."

There's an interesting trade-off which occurs, perhaps inevitably: what was an abstract emotional homage to some mysterious person, feeling, or entity becomes something much more concrete, rooted in particular events and pertaining to a specific person. There's a purity and abandon to the poem which the story cannot embody in the same way--in the story we get the uncertainty, the anxiety, obstacles to be overcome. The story is rooted in all kinds of little banal, everyday concerns (which is what makes stories feel real) like whether he's good enough for her, career decisions and academic obligations that get in their way. And in a sense, all of these little difficulties that the narrator is struggling against culminate to make the final moments of dancing in the field a perfect lift-off point for the utter freedom and abandon of the poem. I think the two pieces work wonderfully, both independently and in tandem.

To focus on the story, you've done a great job accomplishing something I'm incapable of--creating compelling characters (him in particular) and developing their situation in the span of a very short story. The characters come across particularly well through his nervous excitement at her letter and his anxiety at being late to meet her when she's changed venues, and her subtle sarcasm that catches him off-guard more than once.

Two small criticisms: I felt that the asides about the baseball obligations sort of pulled me out of the central story. I know you need to give reasons for the drawn-out separation, but somehow instead of adding to the tension, I felt like the way these were worked in derailed the momentum you'd built up for the interaction between the two characters. I wonder if it might work better if there was a specific weekend rendezvous planned, and then a call from the scout forces a last-minute cancellation? Perhaps that would enhance that stress as he worries that the other guys are going to cut in on his action?

My other little difficulty was here:

I turned to my left as I emerged from the tree cover and saw her for the first time in six months. My heart caught as I realized that no picture could capture how I really felt about her looks.

Not that this reaction isn't fair, and of course, the first thing one sees when they come in view of another person is how they look, but still, somehow, after all this pining, I want that initial connection to be emotional rather than a beauty contest. Especially given the emotional feel of the poem--that level of joyful worship that seems to emanate from something much larger than her classic farmer's daughter style. The story touches here and there on their deeper connection--but it never quite comes across with the same detail and immediacy as we get in this moment dedicated to her physical appearance.

That said, I liked the story; I liked this idea of an immediate connection between two characters who have to struggle a bit to get together again, and their reunion was quite sexy. And you rose admirably to the challenge¡Xthe story illuminates beautifully just what series of events--long-term and short-term--have led to the wild dancing beneath the October moon. Well done.

Angeline,

Love your title, love the film! (though, not being a Jimmy Stewart fan, I hope you don't mind if I subbed in another mental image for Tom during the hot sex ).

And, I know we're not critiquing the poems here, but nice T.S. Eliot reference.

I thought the story, "Pyewacket Days," was fabulous. An attention-grabbing opening line and delightful, poetic prose from start to finish, not to mention the tale itself and the characters inhabiting it being tremendous good fun.

I love this passage:

Tom Stewart is falling into the uncharted depths of Ardith Merrimen's eyes. Sea eyes, he's thinking--green and deep with secrets. And her mouth is lush and he can see the shine of her teeth and, for a moment, the wet promise of her tongue.

And that whole, short section between breaks is a wonderful, intense ratcheting of sexual arousal.

I'm not so sure of the extent to which the story elucidates why you wrote the poem. This could be because you did this before the challenge, or it could (quite easily) be because I'm missing some subtleties (or blatancies?).

The poem seems to be about Pyewacket girl, and her charming, possessing effect on her familiars (turning about the usual notion of animals being the familiars of humans). The story, on the other hand, features Pyewacket, and suggests that she has played a part in casting the spell which has Ardith and Tom tumbling into lust with one another, yet the story doesn't, to me, feel like it's about Pyewacket's power. Instead, in "Pyewacket Days" I feel that Pyewacket is rather in the background, with Edith and the store and customers¡Xpart of Ardith's strange witchy world. So, in a sense, I feel like the poem explains an aspect of the story, rather than the story illuminating the poem.

But I still love both!

Remec,

Ooooh! Deliciously creepy!

I thought your story did an excellent job of revealing the nature of the poem. Not only do we get some incredibly taut, detailed flashes of the aftermath and the actions leading up to the moment of the poem, but many subtle details briefly touched upon in the poem are brought out in the story, such as the killer's eroticized fascination with color, especially red and the relationship of red and pink. I loved the reverse-chronological unfolding of the story, wherein the victim goes from a pretty mannequin-like corpse to a living, breathing, sweet young girl we know is about to meet a grim fate. Chilling.

There were a couple points that confused me¡Xeither in the poem alone and not answered by the story, or which did not trouble me in the poem by itself, but where were made confusing once I'd read the story. First, in the poem, "her trusting eyes' vacant stare." I find myself wondering if the killer sees trust in her eyes that wasn't actually there, or whether this is meant to describe an aspect of her general appearance. In the story, we do see that she's a rather trusting, light-hearted girl who doesn't immediately suspect trouble when some guy comes up behind her while she's getting ready, but I almost wish there had been a line or two in the story when he is looking at her, where you might explore how he's rationalizing what's going through her head. (Now, having read Shanglan's comments, I'll just clarify¡XI assumed she did not know her attacker, but felt that he had been watching/stalking her. ???).

The other point of confusion, for me, was that in the poem we get "blonde hair floating on the crimson pool," but if I'm understanding the story correctly, her body is hung on the wall? The disjuncture seems significant, and I find myself wondering what the killer did with her between the floating and the hanging.

Like the others, you've done an impressive job of packing a lot of detail into a short space¡Xevocative imagery, colorful characters, and a lot of plot. Good job.

BooMerengue,

Wow. As with Belegon, I'm intrigued by the way your story has rooted an ethereal and abstract poem in a story rich with concrete details. The poem, to some degree, could be about most anything¡Xthe speaker could be anyone, the danger could be of any nature, and so could the sin. Your story does a fabulous job of defining all those vague allusions.

I can't help but draw other parallels and contrasts between your two pieces and Belegon's¡Xthe imagery of the moon is present in both, and both are primarily evocative of feeling and mood (whereas Angeline and Remec's poems had more story in the poems themselves). But such different moods, and such different stories.

Your story, I felt, worked marvelously, carrying through the mood and emotions of the poem, but giving concrete form to the fears the poem only alluded to. On the other hand, there's a progression and a shift in the story which isn't in the poem. I am gathering that the poem represents a moment immediately preceding the opening of the story¡XCady has just performed a protective ceremony with her daughter, and the story unfolds from there, both progressing forward in time and offering flashbacks to fill in the history. So, while the poem is rather dark and full of fear and foreboding, the story takes us past the danger, and ultimately there's a feeling of optimism and the satisfaction that comes when justice has been served. The "Wringing my hands to wash out the sins" is not, as far as I can see, addressed in the story. Cady does not seem to feel guilt for what she has done, and it looks like she will not have to answer to the law for the deaths of the boys, either. Unless, of course, she is wringing her hands to wash out the sins of the two boys. In any case, the story certainly rises to the challenge, in that is shows us just what has brought the narrator of the poem to speak of the blood on the moon.

The story, on its own, is powerful. You do a lovely job of building a mysterious tension, then slowly revealing the source of Cady's anxiety. It's an interesting tale, too, in that it takes two vulnerable women living alone atop a mountain, isolated, feared by the people in the valley, and gives them, or at least Cady, tremendous power to redress her daughter's victimization. Stories like this are at once affirming and depressing. There's a thrill to be had in Cady's vengeance, and then a let-down as one must recognize that this kind of supernatural justice isn't really available to women in these situations. But stories like this have a real power¡Xwhich I think is akin to the power of comic book superheroes and a diverse range of other stories that allow people to imagine themselves immensely powerful and able to redress wrongs that are, in the real world, beyond their strength to control.

Thanks again, all of you, for letting me come and play in your forum!

Varian

 

[Varian P]

I think it would be harder to write a story and then come up with a poem that captures its essence. That may be me, though--I've been writing mostly poetry for so long now that I think in poem before prose. What do you think people who are primarily story writers? Would it be easier to write a poem based on a story than the other way round? [/B]

Hmmm, fascinating question. I used to write nothing but poetry (rather awful poetry, I can say now, looking back) and now I write nothing but prose (and perhaps someday I'll look back and think that rather awful, too).

I recently attempted to write a poem, to be used within a novel, which would capture the feelings of the two main characters, and I disappointed myself by utterly failing. I actually didn't think it would be all that hard to write a poem capturing the essence of what I'd been trying to get across with this story, but I've now, at least temporarily, given it up as impossible (at least to someone with my dearth of poetic ability).

Varian

 

[wildsweetone]

Hi,

I'm new at poetry writing (and reading) but not so new in the short story area. Boo this was a fantastic idea with some fascinating insights for me... thanks for the chance to comment.

Firstly I'd like to say that the poems and the stories were all well done. It's good to be able to read writing that doesn't have grammatical or punctuation errors sticking me in the eyeballs.


Belegon
Yes, your story explains and enhances the poem to an extent. The poem alone sounds a very solitaire experience with the reason for the dance being in the last line. The story gives light to your intended meaning of the poem. Well done.

The dance is the happiness in the moment, but surely a parting for an indeterminate length of time would not be happy...? especially after 'kissing her goodnight for at least an hour'.

So in the sense of the story itself, I don't see that Will's main emotion would be overjoy that he'd just scored with Kris when he has no idea when they'll next get together.

Angeline
Your poem and story stand alone.
The story could be edited to fit the maximum word length BooMerengue required.

Now here is where you realise how dense I am about these things...

To me your poem was a metaphoric wonder. I took 'Girl' literally and then discovered she was as slinky as an alley cat... that she could do the impossible ('She shifts the stars.').

I loved 'Tell me hoo possesses hoo?'!

There is sensual movement within this poem that gives it a sense of mystery.

The story is filled with sensory detail.

I would say that both the story and the poem are equal in their enhancement of each other. Neither is lacking... neither is better, they are both stand alone pieces of good work. Well done.

My only query is, as the Pyewacket girl is a cat (in the story), can the cat have a familiar? - it is no doubt my own ignorance there.


Remec
Your story meets the required maximum word count.

God how I love stories that leave me filled with questions and get me to think of possibilities. How did Amber become Alex? Was Alex somebody he had known previously and Amber was replacing her?

Your poem and your story are stand alone pieces of writing.

I do not like reading about blood and guts however in your portrayal of the murder, in the story does not specifically say anything about what flesh and blood is seen. It is left totally to the imagination to 'see' and it works very well.

I think your story explains the poem, rather than enhances it. That's not a bad thing it is simply that I don't see the poem as needing any enhancement.

Well done.


BooMerengue
Yes your story explains your poem. Well done.

Both are stand alone pieces of writing however your poem leaves me with a sense of questioning why blood has been poured i.e. I want to know more.

The story is well written though the only thing I need to comment on is the very last sentence. Cady appears throughout the story as a concerned and caring mother who then retaliates by ensuring the death of the two lads. Although I like the way you have ended the story, her Cady's last comment does not fit with the character you have allowed me to see. I did not expect that she would insinuate the sheriff's demise.

To All
I have loved having this chance of reading your poems and your related prose. What an incredible skill to watch in action.

I wonder if anything any of us has said has altered your own thoughts on your writing. Have you considered changing your poems from our comments? In the writing of your prose, did you see anything that needed changing in your poem? Did your story change the original meaning your poem had for you?

Thank you for inviting me BooMerengue, I've learned a lot! What an excellent exercise. I hope you do this again.

 

[MLyons]

I'm sorry, I've been very busy this weekend and haven't been able to sit down and have a look at everyone's hard work.

I promise I will, most likely sometime early in the week (next few days). I'm very sorry for the delay, but I do plan on participating if you'll all still have me.

 

[Angeline]

Thanks everyone for your kind words--I love getting this feedback, especially as I rarely write stories (but I want to write more prose.I do!).

Wild, Pyewacket Girl is some weird mystical creature. I think she is as much a witch as Ardith or Euphemia though she acts as Euphemia's familiar in the story. I could do another story about Pye--I think she would be a seductress, unlike Ardith who though aware of her power (and certainly could do what Euphemia did) is something of an innocent in this tale.

Thanks again. I'm loving seeing the author's hangout um hanging out here.

 

[BooMerengue]

Hiya everyone! I just wanted y'all to know I'm reading and LOVING every word, but I'm waiting to hear from all the Judges before I comment. But I'm jerking at the bit; I have responses for your responses! LOL

I think this was lots of fun. Thanks so much for coming thru for us!

And hey! We have Challenges of different kinds frequently and some awesome Gunfights! You Story Writers aew always welcome to come enter! Their lots of fun,(shhh! and educational, too!)

See ya 'round the middle of the week!

I also want to thank the participants... *glancing around at all the others who are supposed to be here. You guys missed a fun thing! Thanks, Tristesse, for letting me know you couldn't make it.

 

[GingerV]

Right up front, and off the top, I want to say "thank you" to all of you. This weekend, taking a deep dive into stories and poems (something I don't spend nearly enough time reading), has been a real joy. I'm impressed with just how multi-talented the folks are around here. I thought I was going to be reading stories by poets...and while poets you most certainly are, I was reading stories by short-story authors. If I'd been asked to write a poem based on one of my stories so some strange folks could tell me what they thought about it, I'd have been a quivering puddle of nerves .
Overall I was very impressed with the quality of the stories. I sense a love for the power of words in all of these, a thoughtfulness I wish I saw more often.

I want to give a specific thankyou to Boomeringe for keeping us all organized and on target. It must've been like herding cats .

Finally, I'm trying to keep my answers brief and general. If ANYONE wants to chat more with me about what I said (or what I skipped), do please get hold of me. I'm going to be tough to find for a few days...but after that, I'll be back.


OK, on with the stories, in the order posted.

Belegon - Dancing Wildly

When I started this, I told myself I wouldn't comment on the poetry. I don't much about poetry, I don't write it. I enjoy it, but that's pretty much it. It's looking more and more like that's not going to happen. Reading this poem, I realized I was doing this wrong. I wasn't going to be able to help myself commenting. Nor should I. The big question is how did reading the story CHANGE my feelings about the poem, in a way. To do that, you need to know what I thought before. Ironically, looking back on it, I didn't have as much to say about this one. Mostly because it left me speechless. Belegon, I don't know, technically or artistically, how you packed so much awe and joy into a brief description of a moment…but I'm amazed. This is a gem.


The story…You've got a lovely, controlled style. It felt like every word of the first several paragraphs was building the characters, either directly or indirectly. They developed very quickly, and felt real. The only sour note (and it was only slightly off true) was that the "extras" seemed to be dropped into the story quickly and without explanation…and then pushed out just as fast. For example, I'm not sure Jason gives you as much as you lose from having your reader spend time figuring out who he is. For similar reasons, I'm not sure how much story of your narrator's being drafted and spending the summer in the bushleagues helps you. It does establish why they don't get together sooner…why that night is so precious…but I don't think we NEED to know why. We're willing to accept that "getting together that summer didn't work out." That said, these are small hitches. What's impressive is that your narrator has a strong voice from the outset, and that while we don't immediately get a sense of who Kris is…we do get a sense for what he feels for her. It's very well done.


I think it's because you got his passion for Kris so much under my skin that:

Suddenly I was kissing her once again and I knew that I had been wrong. The magic of that first night was still there.

felt like too little to me. I don't want to be told that the magic of the first night was there…I was longing to see it, read it for myself. I'm willing to take your word for it…but I'd so much rather feel it. If it's the word count that held you back…I'll trade you that paragraph about baseball for this one . ESPECIALLY because you're capable of wonders such as:

The last time I memorized every instant as I stared up at her silhouetted against the fading light, breasts bouncing as she rode me, her mouth gasping for air just before she collapsed on my chest as her arms gave out and her legs straightened beneath her with the force of her orgasm.

What might your proper description of that first, magical kiss have been like.


Your only technical mistake is that you switch tenses in the last full paragraph. You've been consistent in past tense, then switch to present. I wonder if you did it on purpose. If you wanted to do it to emphasize that THIS is where the poetry comes in. I don't think it's either necessary or effective, if that was it.


In the end you put me in a miserable quandary. I love your two last sentences. Both of them. Each of them. I think they're wonderful and masterful and moving. And I think there's one too many. It feels like Sophie's choice, I'm that silly about words. Wait and see what other people say, but it feels like gilding the lily. Like you're underlining and highlighting something that could've ended so beautifully and simply.


But the purpose of this exercise was to relate a story to a poem…so lets try that. I liked the story, I loved the poem. When I first read the poem, I wanted more. The story gave me the backstory I'd be curious about, it answer the questions. But then the weird thing happened. I went back and read the poem after the story to see if my interpretation of it changed at all…and it had, but it had narrowed. Before, I'd seen you worshipping all of creation, life itself, and sharing that with the absent "you". After…the worship was more about the girl, the feelings within your heart; the world narrowed down to you and her. I honest to [insert diety of choice] don't think this is any fault or flaw of yours, I'm not even convinced it's a bad thing. Heck, it could all be in my mind. But I think the poem was so strong, stood so well on its own, that any explanation could only constrain it. But that's the magic, right? Poets do more with the right 20 words than I can do with 2000.

Angeline - Pyewacket Girl

The poem - I don't think I've ever so much wanted to be a cat. Great poem. Magical is too easy a description, but it comes bounding to mind. The cat's eye view of the world, building it from blocks of pumpkins and stars, is surprising and effective. I also expect it's a good choice, practically. I haven't read the story yet…but it seems like there's loads of scope in the poem. I want to take a moment to ask if the artwork posted with the story was also original. It dropped my jaw, and tied everything together wonderfully.

The story - I like the way the tone of the story right away echoes the style of the poem. Both in terms of word choice, and the use of present tense. I'm in love with the phrase "odd yellow eyes fixed on his, as if he were being assessed by a piece of the moon," also "intimate strangers" (although looking at it now, it's much better in context, you own that phrase because of the rest of the piece…).

Early on, I'm a little confused about the happenings. You left me a few blanks to fill in, I was initially 80% sure I knew who was with Euphemia on the train, for instance. At the end, I'm 80% sure I have no idea . I think it may have been a stylistic choice to avoid taking time and breaking the flow with exposition. It's not a real problem, a sense of uncertainty can build tension. But it keeps the story from being as effortless and flowing as the poem was. In the end, I'm left wondering why. Aunt wanted to get a man for Ardith, but why now? There doesn't have to be a reason, but it's not said…so I'm left puzzled.

I like the scattershot inventory of immediate attractions. Very evocative. It helps sell the spell to us. Likewise, the rapid fire language during the seduction. I'm not sure what you meant by "fine-haired sure hands" are, though. Or, later, what the Son was in "the moonlight and the Son and the slurp" (although I applaud the wonderful sound of "slurp").

I do like the end. It's warm and cozy, and I'm not sure how else to describe how it made me feel. I think I would've liked to know a bit more about what was going through Ardith's head at the end. I like the hint of a future her confession gives, but for the purposes of the Challenge it was already 1000 words over (I know, you didn't write it for the Challenge ) so I can't ask for anything more.

But back to the poem. How did it impact my read of the story…definitely more in terms of style than content. Having read the poem, I think I was more open to the poetic style of the story. But in terms of real connection, I don't know. Pye plays a weirdly here again, gone again role in the story. She opens and closes it, she enables the spell, she draws Tom in. But it's not her story. The poem and story are complimentary, more than interrelated. I almost want to see a third work focusing on the Aunt, in yet another different style. Going back to the poem after reading the story, I'm still utterly enchanted with it (and I still hate the pun, but can't find another word…). I'm starting to wonder if Pye might be on her way to find Tom, but don't think it matters if she is…Pye is Pye being Pye, whatever she does. I don't think the poem gained, lost or changed its meaning after reading the story. I think they're too different, and as it wasn't written to expose another side of the poem from what I understand, that shouldn't be too much of a surprise. But I'm very very glad to have been introduced to both, and the wonderful characters they chronicle.

Remec - Passionate Obsession

The poem - First impressions. This is a different level. I don't mean a different subject…the last two poems have been reaching out, descriping the subject's relationship to its environment. Here, the environment is non-existent, it's an extremely constrained subject. In prose, I'd expect that this was being done to force the reader to focus on something they might otherwise have been tempted to pull away from. Not sure if it's the same intent here, but it's the feel I got. That sense of claustrophobia was emphasized by the focus on and repetition of variations on "red". Bringing it back to that first line, over and over. It has left me a definite impression of what to expect in the story, although I'm hoping for a twist or a surprise.

The story…was there a twist? Yes and no. I like the decision to tell the story backwards, especially as the punchline was already given in the poem. Since the ending it given, the surprise has to be in how it began. It's a good choice…the scariest part of a horror story SHOULD be the "beginning" of the story. That's the hook. I like the idea of building to that point. There's a school of thought (are there schools of horror writing? Nevermind….) that horror stories are most frightening when they let the reader fill in the blanks. After all, we're going to put in the thing that scares us most…something that the author would never have thought of. I'm not sure if you're leaving gaps because of the word limit, or to take advantage of the phenomenon (or both). Either way, I think too much was left to my imagination. I don't understand the killer, what makes him different or interesting. I don't really have anything to build on. I'm left wanting to know why her. Why now? They seem to know each other, but I don't know how well, or for how long. I know enough to be puzzled and curious, but not enough to be creeped out.

Which brings me to the No part of "yes and no." There was a stylistic twist, but not in the subject. The story didn't tell me anything I didn't expect to see…it just presented it in a way I didn't anticipate. It was all there in the poem. This was probably aggravated by the gaps I mentioned earlier. I got to fill in blanks, probably more than I realized, and I did it with what I thought was going to be there.

This is most telling when I went back to the poem after reading the story. It didn't change for me. It could've. If I'd developed more empathy with the girl, if I'd gained an insight into the killer, if I'd found that it was a metaphor or steeped in double meaning. Any of those, and the poem would've gotten more under my skin than it did the first time. As it was, while they fit together in terms of narrative, I'm not sure the story "informed" the poem in this case. I hate to say it, but I think the poem was more effective without the back story. But that really is just me…horror's not my genre, ordinarily.


Boomeringe Blood On The Moon


The poem alone…ominous. WAY ominous, more atmosphere than I've ever seen from so few words. It's not a story, it's a pure emotion, but there's obviously a story behind it. I'm curious to know if you knew what it was when you wrote what follows, or if you knew part of it but not all…I honestly can't tell. I hesitate to say it (I've said before that I'm scared to death of poetry ) but I kind of wonder if something could've been gained by making small (single word?) changes in that repeated line. "Wringing my hands to wash out the sins" is wonderfully suggestive. It sticks in my mind, I found myself mimicking the motion in real life.


The story - It's a good tale, you catch me right away…and make me care. The poem calls for mysticism, and the spell you give us is powerful. It evokes the power and uncertain dread of the poem. I liked the "image" of the echoing voices, and the bloody light running down her arms were wonderful. Skin tingly. I think I was hoping for more of that imagery through the rest of the story, before and after the spell we're mostly just given bare facts. It's almost like you're laying the groundwork for the emotion before letting it rip, if that makes sense? But I'm not entirely sure that part of the wonder wasn't the contrast to the style of the other sections.

Still, it might be something to think about. Maybe you could've started building that steadily from the beginning. Maybe by giving Cady a stronger point of view? We never really see what she's thinking or feeling. We see her reaction to this horrific event, but we don't see her emotion. She must've been angry to take such action, but I just see its echo…not its immediacy. Setting the narrator more firmly in Cady's head would change how you talk about the background, but that might not be a bad thing. It's an experiment, but I think less background might make the story more powerful. The time you spend describing M's school or the boy's role in town politics is all time that gives me a chance to recover from the shock of the rape. Because of where you've placed it in the story, I think you need to prune it down to as little as possible, in order to maintain your momentum.

Trimming out some of the exposition could also give you space (darn that word limit) to show us more of M's reaction/involvement. The non-witch in me is still a little puzzled as to what "drawing her into the circle" meant…am I right in presuming there was another spell we didn't get to see? But most of all, you got under my skin girl, I want to know she's getting better. I want to see her again at the end. Some hint, not of a happy ending, but just some idea of who she is and how she is. The story is very much about her mother, but she's so key to it…it feels like she should be more present somehow.

But the real question…back the poem. Wow. This one really did change. The first time I read it, the blood on the moon was a threat. It was a warning. I had visions of a Hawthornesque world, a curse, a fear. But that's not it, is it. She PUT the blood in the moon, didn't she. The sin at the end wasn't some distant act that she was being warned of imminent pay-back for….the sin was immediate, it was the blood. There's still an overt invocation of the future, her plea that her family be saved, but now I feel that she's asking that she herself pay the price to heal the moon. The subject is stronger now, not so much a victim of fate. It's not so much about fear, any more. I don't know at all if that was what you meant to do, how you meant to explain it, but it's definitely the biggest change in my interpretation of a poem of the lot.




Thanks again to everyone for inviting me in to play...it really has been fun!

G

 

[Angeline]

Hiya everyone! I just wanted y'all to know I'm reading and LOVING every word, but I'm waiting to hear from all the Judges before I comment. But I'm jerking at the bit; I have responses for your responses! LOL

I think this was lots of fun. Thanks so much for coming thru for us!

And hey! We have Challenges of different kinds frequently and some awesome Gunfights! You Story Writers aew always welcome to come enter! Their lots of fun,(shhh! and educational, too!)

See ya 'round the middle of the week!

I also want to thank the participants... *glancing around at all the others who are supposed to be here. You guys missed a fun thing! Thanks, Tristesse, for letting me know you couldn't make it.

Well you are the best for coming up with the idea. I didn't know what to expect, but this is pretty cool, B.