Spotlight on...

[unpredictablebijou]

In order to actually talk about editing, I thought I'd look at the stuff I've been doing and find a rough draft. One of the early pages in my current journal is a rough outline of the poem I wrote for the death of Ingmar Bergman. It wound up in the 30/30 and I was not displeased with it, at least for a 24-hour occasional poem.

Here is what is written in my journal. words in blue were written and then crossed out or corrected. Words in red were scribbled into the margins with arrows and added later. Words in orange are ones that I surrounded with parentheses as a signal to myself to consider whether they needed to be changed.


Bergman

You have met your first and final fascination
The hooded force that contrasts flesh in those stone scenes
where life stills, hallucinatory
and the faces are stone rocky with longing
the dry landscape in which the only goal pinnacle is to place the hand
against a marble cheek
to warm it back
to life.

black against white, those faces
surrounded like moons, move like hour hands
in their planetary rise and set
over the stone landscape
the hand on the soft face -

Death cheats
Death hears your confession
disguised as a priest.


**
Bergman's iconography is so classic and formal that I thought I'd try to work within some sort of very slow and ponderous rhythm, to try to reflect the pace of his films. And I'm a big fan, so I wanted to offer him my best possible effort. It helped that earlier that day I saw some bits of an interview he did with Dick Cavett, so I got to hear his voice, and I got to hear him talk about his childhood.

So on the next page I'm experimenting with lines within a sort of meter. Scrawled lines appear in no particular order:

You have now met your first and final fascination
the hooded force in opposition to the flesh,


White against black, those faces ringed by lasting night
like moons, in planetary motion, rise and set;

it was strange to you when they would point and shout
that hooded death did not stand there, where you saw it.

Now the contrast of the flesh and stone in scenes
are your common icons. Your faces, landscapes
rocky with longing,

***

Then I typed it into a draft file and played with meter. I did a lot of cut and paste and shift with the lines. After a while, it looked like this.

To Ingmar

You know the truth now, as you have always suspected it:
Death cheats. Death hears your confession
disguised as a priest, and knows your moves before you make them.

You have now met your first and final fascination
the hooded force in opposition to the flesh,
your lover and your mother who in the dream of childhood
taught you that you saw a different world than those
who tried to train you to the concrete culture's trance.

Their dreams were strange, and whether you preferred your own,
you had them anyway, and undeniably enough
that it was strange to you when they would point and shout
that hooded death did not stand there, where you saw it.

Now the contrast of the flesh and stone in scenes
are your common icons. Your faces, landscapes
rocky with longing, a desert in which the only cure
is to place the hand against a sallow marble cheek
and warm it back to life.

White against black, those faces ringed by lasting night
like moons, in planetary motion, rise and set;
they move like hour-hands across your stony ground.

***

Then I typed it in, at ABOUT 5 AM, to the 30/30 thread and tweaked it some more. The draft that appears there looks like this:


To Ingmar

You know the truth now, as you have always suspected it:
Death cheats. Death hears your confession
disguised as a priest, and knows your moves before you make them.

You have now met your first and final fascination:
the hooded force in opposition to the flesh,
your lover and your father since the dream of childhood
taught you that you saw a different world than those
who tried to train you to the concrete culture's trance.

Their dreams were strange, and whether you preferred your own,
you had them anyway, and undeniably enough
that it was pain to you when they would point and shout
that hooded death did not stand there, where you saw it.

Now the contrast of the flesh and stone in scenes
where life moves at a bright, hallucinatory crawl
are icons of your public mind. Your faces, landscapes
rocky with longing, a desert in which the only cure
is to place the hand against a sallow marble cheek
and warm it back to life.

White against black, those faces ringed by lasting night
like moons, in planetary motion, rise and set;
they move like hour-hands across your stony ground.


***

Honestly, now that I'm looking at it for the first time in 6 weeks or so, I'm hating some sections, and eventually I might go back and slash a few things. I'm not fond of lines 6-8 at all. I might blow them up. And the third stanza is sorta solid, but I'm so immensely fond of "hooded death did not stand there, where you saw it" that I suspect it of being a Sacred Cow and I'm going to be very suspicious of it for a while. Building a second-rate stanza to support a good line is slacking, so I'm keeping an eye on that one.

This piece will now probably sit for a good six months and I won't look at it again until next spring. Then I'll see how I feel about it, tweak it some more, probably shorten it radically, and then maybe submit it to Lit.

And hope that the reviewer that day likes me...

bijou

 

[Angeline]

In order to actually talk about editing, I thought I'd look at the stuff I've been doing and find a rough draft. One of the early pages in my current journal is a rough outline of the poem I wrote for the death of Ingmar Bergman. It wound up in the 30/30 and I was not displeased with it, at least for a 24-hour occasional poem.

<snip>

This is extraordinary, bijou. Such a cogent, measured explanation of the process you go through from first thoughts to (sort of) finished piece. I'm especially interested in that stage where you think about rhythm. I've been thinking a lot lately that the best poems I read (or write) are lyrical, that they have a very natural sounding rhythm whether form or free verse. When I feel I've achieved that in a traditional form it's usually because I've worked enjambment against the form so it doesn't sound constricted when read. But it's a process I think about with free verse, too. And very often when I read (or write) a free verse poem I think isn't quite "there," it's because the rhythm is wrong, the flow isn't there.

Very interesting stuff. Thank you.

 

[unpredictablebijou]

This is extraordinary, bijou. Such a cogent, measured explanation of the process you go through from first thoughts to (sort of) finished piece. I'm especially interested in that stage where you think about rhythm. I've been thinking a lot lately that the best poems I read (or write) are lyrical, that they have a very natural sounding rhythm whether form or free verse. When I feel I've achieved that in a traditional form it's usually because I've worked enjambment against the form so it doesn't sound constricted when read. But it's a process I think about with free verse, too. And very often when I read (or write) a free verse poem I think isn't quite "there," it's because the rhythm is wrong, the flow isn't there.

Very interesting stuff. Thank you.

My pleasure, absolutely. So glad it's helping.

Just cross your fingers that that methodology works for me as I bash on the Monthly and Naughty poetry challenges...

bijou

 

[wildsweetone]

bijou, thank you for being so open in the spotlight. i'm enjoying watching you. i mean, i'm enjoying lurking and learning.

 

[TheRainMan]

. . . Such a cogent, measured explanation of the process you go through from first thoughts to (sort of) finished piece . . .

i agree.

and bijou -- many kudos for being so open and for taking the not insignificant amounts of time you have in this thread, to answer.

what a positive influence you have been here on this forum.

thank you.

 

[foehn2]

Anapest is a dactyl because someone had to volunteer, since dactyl couldn't be one himself, even in the adjectival form. Anapest is generous about its own identity and dactyls have understandably low self-esteem.

i'm not in love. i'm not. i'm not. honest.

 

[foehn2]

Such a cogent, measured explanation...

most people don't write like this, you know. you kinda deserve a spotlight, too.

 

[Angeline]

most people don't write like this, you know. you kinda deserve a spotlight, too.

Well thank you.

I've always written that way AND talked that way and gotten myself in all sorts of scrapes because of it. "You're doing that on purpose." "No, I'm not." "You're doing that to show off." "No, really, I just talk this way." My immediate and extended family were all big readers and very big on education, formal and self. We always had a ton of books around, we didn't watch that much tv, we did crossword puzzles together, and we went to the library religiously. That's all very good for the old vocabulary.

And I've had my share of spotlights here. Actually I'm so liking the way this thread is turning out that when it winds down, I'd like to do another one. I have a poet in mind, too, but we'll see if he agrees to it.

 

[unpredictablebijou]

Well thank you.

I've always written that way AND talked that way and gotten myself in all sorts of scrapes because of it. "You're doing that on purpose." "No, I'm not." "You're doing that to show off." "No, really, I just talk this way." My immediate and extended family were all big readers and very big on education, formal and self. We always had a ton of books around, we didn't watch that much tv, we did crossword puzzles together, and we went to the library religiously. That's all very good for the old vocabulary.

And I've had my share of spotlights here. Actually I'm so liking the way this thread is turning out that when it winds down, I'd like to do another one. I have a poet in mind, too, but we'll see if he agrees to it.

Cool! Start it whenever - I never mind sharing a stage. We can have food fights between the two threads. (Unless it's someone terribly serious and then this one can be the monkey house.)

Besides, I intend to milk this fifteen minutes until it's Dry as a Popcorn Fart, as they say. It's being great fun.

It's no wonder you're so smart, given a wonderful resource like that upbringing, but I bet you'd have been pretty damn smart under any circumstances.

bijou

 

[Angeline]

Cool! Start it whenever - I never mind sharing a stage. We can have food fights between the two threads. (Unless it's someone terribly serious and then this one can be the monkey house.)

Besides, I intend to milk this fifteen minutes until it's Dry as a Popcorn Fart, as they say. It's being great fun.

It's no wonder you're so smart, given a wonderful resource like that upbringing, but I bet you'd have been pretty damn smart under any circumstances.

bijou

You're very kind. And also very smart. We'll just call it a mutual admiration society, witchy tai tai.

I have to talk the next victi...er...participant into it first.

 

[unpredictablebijou]

Thinking a great deal the last couple of days about that question, "what makes a poem erotic?" since I'm rather desperately bashing on something for the Naughty Poetry Challenge. I have around six pieces, and multiple attempts at those, that I'm terribly unhappy with.

first of all, though, I won't talk about poetry. I just can't; I wouldn't dare try to define it. But I will comfortably discuss the idea of a "collection of words, possibly with non-margin related or deliberate line divisions, generally shorter than a novel." And what makes that sort of thing sexy, what makes it a turn-on, is important to me. Well, currently it has to be. I'm laying my process out again, here, because I am in medias res with this naughty poetry thing. What the hell was I thinking?

If I get enough bottled courage in me at some point, I may lay out a few of my failed processes during this challenge. That's a bit of surgery that makes me shudder, way more than laying out the evolution of the Bergman piece did. But I might. We'll see if I'm brave enough later.

Does anyone start out with the goal of actually "arousing" an audience? What I mean is, I can have something lovely happen to me and have the desire to record it, to express or describe it, and then end up with a piece that also works to show that event or picture to an audience in a way that turns them on. But the initial urge to write that thing was from my own desire to codify that experience, to mark out that territory and name some places on the map, so that I remember them, or so that I can move those images out of my head and make room for new ones. That's not the same urge as the one that leads us to sit down and say, "I will write a thing that makes a man's cock hard when he reads it." A noble goal, to be sure, but that's very dangerous territory for me, and that's actually the territory I'm in for this challenge.

And at the risk of starting one of those boring semantic arguments that tends to degenerate into the behavior that gets us called snobs around here, I have to wonder what "erotic" means anyway. I think that if we were really honest with ourselves, we would secretly define it as "That which is arousing to smart people with Issues," or maybe "That relatively delicate and well-written sort of pornography that turns me on but does not make me feel as if I had been dipped in 40-weight."

I tend to read just as many of the 40-weight stories on this board as the "quality stuff," since I am extraordinarily interested, academically even, in anything that turns people on and why it does so, and since I am a twisted, kinky, painfully crooked human being.

(Hey that reminds me. After we talk about writing, can we turn to a discussion of sex? I really like talking about sex. I make an occasional living doing so, even. Sometimes in the bar when everyone is really going at top speed, I can say, "Hey, somebody talk about sex," and then the conversation becomes Truly Wonderful.)

But I digress.

Do the same things that make a story really hot make a "poem-thing" hot as well? I don't know. Perhaps in part, because the stories that make me hot have an immediacy to them that is the real doorway to a reader. Did this happen to me in the course of reading? Was it vivid and correct enough that I was present in that scene? Could I hear those words being said to me?

I will say one very, very concrete thing. I had a professor who said, "Kill all gerunds." That advice has served me well. Gerund forms of verbs are often too wishy-washy; they necessitate a sentence structure that's less direct, and they often weaken a piece.

I'm reminded of this cause what I thought I'd do is wander through the "New Poems" section, just randomly, and find some lines that actually turn me on, and think about why. I'm seeing whole herds of gerunds in there, and the strings of them just tend to lose me after a while. We are eternally licking or stroking or sliding or moaning, and there's no bang, no actual beginning or end to that action.

cutiesub has this line:
as it flows towards your mouth to escape.

That's vivid. That line worked because not only do I know how that feels but it's a relatively creative way to say it. It's tight. There's that "smart people with Issues" creeping in. Eroticism must include the mind, to a certain extent, and then if it's really going to work it has to supersede the mind, turn it off and let the body respond. For most of us, we have to get the mind engaged and participating and then sabotage it with sensation in order for sex to really become "mind-blowing," and I think writing has to do something similar: find the brain, attract it, and then sabotage it with imagery that takes it into uncharted territory.

OK, here's another one I just found that has some rather hot moments. FilmStrip by virgingloves
here's the link to the whole thing.
http://www.literotica.com/stories/showstory.php?id=330863
Here are some lines that I liked:

But on the back of the car?
Yes
In the driveway?
Yes
But someone might see us
Exactly

** and these:

Play, pause, masturbate
Rewind to the money shot
She knew how to moan
Like a starlet

Like this?
Bent over under sparkling skies
Yes, don’t move
Pavement under her feet
Ready for action?

**
it's nice and raw and simple. I felt like I was there.

And these are great fun too:
Two Poems
by Cal Y. Pygia (the name alone kills me. They should be in the Naughty Poetry thing with this pair.)
http://www.literotica.com/stories/showstory.php?id=330732

Everything I've seen in there so far has fiercely weak moments, but a few are pieces that, if they were mine, I would at least type in and bang on for a year or so. They'd make the cut that far.

I just had to mention this one too:
http://www.literotica.com:81/stories/showstory.php?id=330680

Yes, it's in rhymed, awkward iambic quatrameter, sort of. It's not a Good Poem, if there is such a thing in the world. It might be Awful, in its way. But there's a hell of a story underneath that, and I read it twice, cause I was just so surprised at the end. There's some nice raunchy detail like the bad mattress. It's obviously a confessional journal entry that someone thought to submit here, as a "poem." It's no Pushcart Prize winner.

Y'know what though? Two things happened to me when I read this piece. First of all, it really caught me at the end. My brain stopped short and said, "o my god..."

and here's the other thing:

It kinda made me hot.

So that's why I won't define poetry. Or erotica, for that matter. It's an incredibly personal journey, both in the writing and in the responding.

We're so defensive, sometimes, about our sexuality, and i think it creeps into our judgments of writing and erotica as well. Sexually speaking, what would happen if i just go ahead and own the fact that that godawful piece about "How I Humiliated My Mom with Six Different Vegetables" or whatever, may have made me feel icky and terrible, but it also made bits of me embarrassingly warm and creamy in a couple of places. What IS that? And how can we find the pure force, the clean energy source, underneath that thing and use it to reach Pluto?

I will confess that I am quite desperate about the Naughty Poetry thing and so I'm thinking a lot about what Makes A Reader Hot. I have great faith in my ability to do so in prose, to write Something That Will Make a Man's Cock Hard. I have, in fact, done laboratory testing that confirms this. So how is it that I'm so stumped right now with the "poetic" (i use that term only to contrast with "story") form of the same thing? Or does, in fact, poetic erotica, a short piece with line divisions, really require some sort of narrative to perform the same way?

I'm going to go write now. Thanks for listening.

bijou

 

[champagne1982]

Does this make you hot?

]A Trip to the Theater[/url]
She entered the sex theater. It was like stepping into a giant whore's vulva. The smell of stale semen, the humidity, dark, wanton, lewd. The screen full of the lurid, pink wetness of the actress' wide open femininity. She walked down the aisle, heard material rustle and the deep breathing of arousal rising from the rows of seats as she passed.

or this?

] Lust's Canvas[/url]
Give me this
now, tonight.
Don't leave me
without sliding
in and out and over
again against those places.

I think a major difference between these two very, disparate quotes is the hard core erotica in the story which contrasts nicely with the suggestive erotic in the poem.

I'll hint that I really did set out to make a man's cock hard and my audience to feel like they're dipped in 40 weight oil, with these pieces. It's fairly easy, since I just go with what makes me slippery. If I don't need to change my panties after a story, it failed as erotica... (and honestly, not many poems do that for me; but I try!)

So, is your challenge bit done yet?

 

[champagne1982]

<snip>So, is your challenge bit done yet?

Oh I see it is!
Honestly, I thought he was gonna use 'em as a ring. That would have been kinky...

 

[unpredictablebijou]

Oh I see it is!
Honestly, I thought he was gonna use 'em as a ring. That would have been kinky...

You read it! Yay.

Hey I was talking about you the other day cause you were worried that people were talking about you, so I did, but now I don't remember which thread it was on. It's all such a blur...

It was about a couple of lines of yours that I really liked. I think it was in the middle of some silly controversy and I was trying to be distracting.


Dear Jesus, please don't let this thread die until I can get at least one rousing conversation about sex going. Amen.

bijou

 

[champagne1982]

<snip>
Dear Jesus, please don't let this thread die until I can get at least one rousing conversation about sex going. Amen.

bijou

Praying to Heysoos is a lil silly when you want to talk about boinkage, isn't it? Do you have access to Puerto Rican pool boys in Kansas? I know in my little puddle of prairie ethnic diversity is sadly limited. I think that's a result of being so far north that by the time anyone from the deep south has travelled half the distance, they've realized that to continue would leave them freezing their tata's (aka dangly bits) off before they find a place to stay.

Now, a rousing convo about sex begins with 2 simple questions: Do you prefer clitoral or gspot induced orgasms and can you tell the difference between them?

 

[Tathagata]

I think it was in the middle of some silly controversy and I was trying to be distracting.

I do that once in a while

 

[unpredictablebijou]

Praying to Heysoos is a lil silly when you want to talk about boinkage, isn't it? Do you have access to Puerto Rican pool boys in Kansas? I know in my little puddle of prairie ethnic diversity is sadly limited. I think that's a result of being so far north that by the time anyone from the deep south has travelled half the distance, they've realized that to continue would leave them freezing their tata's (aka dangly bits) off before they find a place to stay.

Now, a rousing convo about sex begins with 2 simple questions: Do you prefer clitoral or gspot induced orgasms and can you tell the difference between them?

Out of mercy for the injured finger I won't go into religion at the moment but those are good points. Suffice it to say for the moment, that Jesus is Just Alright with Me, and he knows how twisted I am. Not silly at all; praying to the gods of the majority is just good politics. And he's a buddy of mine. We discuss his followers regularly. He helps me understand them and be more compassionate. He's good at that.

Here's the thing about those differentiations: there are actually three-ish mechanisms that work to create sensations of climax in women. Forgive me if you know all this already; there might be one or two folks in here who didn't, so I'll take a chance. One is the clitoris, which is not in fact a small button but rather a wishbone-shaped organ whose "arms" run along the sides of the outer vagina. go here for a picture. That whole organ gets involved when you've got the right combination of stimuli. The tip is just the most accessible bit. It has a very different effect, and a different "orgasm" association, from the way orgasm is created by manipulation of the "arms", which in VERY short is SORT OF what That Bastard Freud referred to as a "vaginal orgasm."

Then there's the "G-spot," which westerners now call the Bartholin glands and the urethral sponge. Taoists call it things like Water-Chestnut Teeth and Mixed Rock and Sun Terrace. I like Taoists. That whole area is still mysterious to western medicine but the ancients knew all about it. It generates the elixir of immortality, among other things. When you treat it right, anyway.

I like all of them. Simultaneously. Several times. Just a personal preference.

I think grrrls are really lucky because we figure out early on that there are about a million different "kinds" of orgasm. Sometimes I think of them mapped out on a three-axis sort of a setup; how much and what kind of stimulus is being used on which bit. There are, when you think of it that way, rather an infinite number of possibilities. (I hope the engineers and mathematicians around here will test my math diligently on that one.)

Men have to work harder and more deliberately to discover that they have a similar range. They don't just get to experience it automatically like we can. Poor things.

Anyway, yes, yes and yes. Wait. What was the question?

bijou

 

[Tathagata]

Out of mercy for the injured finger I won't go into religion at the moment but those are good points. Suffice it to say for the moment, that Jesus is Just Alright with Me, and he knows how twisted I am. Not silly at all; praying to the gods of the majority is just good politics. And he's a buddy of mine. We discuss his followers regularly. He helps me understand them and be more compassionate. He's good at that.

Here's the thing about those differentiations: there are actually three-ish mechanisms that work to create sensations of climax in women. Forgive me if you know all this already; there might be one or two folks in here who didn't, so I'll take a chance. One is the clitoris, which is not in fact a small button but rather a wishbone-shaped organ whose "arms" run along the sides of the outer vagina. go here for a picture. That whole organ gets involved when you've got the right combination of stimuli. The tip is just the most accessible bit. It has a very different effect, and a different "orgasm" association, from the way orgasm is created by manipulation of the "arms", which in VERY short is SORT OF what That Bastard Freud referred to as a "vaginal orgasm."

Then there's the "G-spot," which westerners now call the Bartholin glands and the urethral sponge. Taoists call it things like Water-Chestnut Teeth and Mixed Rock and Sun Terrace. I like Taoists. That whole area is still mysterious to western medicine but the ancients knew all about it. It generates the elixir of immortality, among other things. When you treat it right, anyway.

I like all of them. Simultaneously. Several times. Just a personal preference.

I think grrrls are really lucky because we figure out early on that there are about a million different "kinds" of orgasm. Sometimes I think of them mapped out on a three-axis sort of a setup; how much and what kind of stimulus is being used on which bit. There are, when you think of it that way, rather an infinite number of possibilities. (I hope the engineers and mathematicians around here will test my math diligently on that one.)

Men have to work harder and more deliberately to discover that they have a similar range. They don't just get to experience it automatically like we can. Poor things.

Anyway, yes, yes and yes. Wait. What was the question?

bijou

I need a shower now

 

[unpredictablebijou]

I need a shower now

Hot or cold?

bj

 

[champagne1982]

I need a shower now

Now I understand what you mean by " a-rousing sex talk", upbj. The monkey gets roused through thoughts of sex, he must be really messy from the talk!

I couldn't agree more with the idea that women are lucky when it comes to finding their orgasmic triggers. Yes, there are different orgasmic experiences through all 3 of the feminine mysteries. I've been fortunate in my experiences with men and their wicked ways of enticing my response out from under the hood. They've been very good.

As to the elixir... well, that's just amazing when licked from a lover's lips and shared, as if ambrosia, while basking in Buddha's smile; right on the threshold of Nirvana. < sigh >

 

[The_Fool]

Now I understand what you mean by " a-rousing sex talk", upbj. The monkey gets roused through thoughts of sex, he must be really messy from the talk!

I couldn't agree more with the idea that women are lucky when it comes to finding their orgasmic triggers. Yes, there are different orgasmic experiences through all 3 of the feminine mysteries. I've been fortunate in my experiences with men and their wicked ways of enticing my response out from under the hood. They've been very good.

As to the elixir... well, that's just amazing when licked from a lover's lips and shared, as if ambrosia, while basking in Buddha's smile; right on the threshold of Nirvana. < sigh >

arouse me
your presence is enough
to turn my thoughts to sex
messy in my daydreams
seeking closure
closer to the core of you
wicked ways
wicked are my ways
seeking to entice your response
beneath the covers
beneath the hood
as I taste that elixir
offered from your lips
and return the favor on mine
as we seek the eightfold path
together

 

[unpredictablebijou]

arouse me
your presence is enough
to turn my thoughts to sex
messy in my daydreams
seeking closure
closer to the core of you
wicked ways
wicked are my ways
seeking to entice your response
beneath the covers
beneath the hood
as I taste that elixir
offered from your lips
and return the favor on mine
as we seek the eightfold path
together

Yow.
the buddha would be very pleased.


bj

 

[The_Fool]

Yow.
the buddha would be very pleased.


bj

I was just mining Carrie's post. It's her fault...

 

[unpredictablebijou]

I was just mining Carrie's post. It's her fault...

Just list her as your co-author. And who's talking fault? I'm talking credit.

so what should the trophy for this challenge look like? I'm thinking tall and pink.

bj

 

[The_Fool]

Just list her as your co-author. And who's talking fault? I'm talking credit.

so what should the trophy for this challenge look like? I'm thinking tall and pink.

bj

Short, Tall, Pink, blue. I don't care what she looks like, as long as she smiles.