Poet Shmoet

Statue of Roman poet Ovid in Constanta. Image from WikiCommons.

By Sal Buttaci  

I have never felt comfortable referring to myself as a poet. Instead, I tell folks I write poems. To me, the designation “poet” is something I have always assigned to the master poets down through Literature, those literary giants in whose works we still delight.  Like most, I have quite a few poets whom I consider favorites. I read their poems again and again and they never lose their original appeal. The good feeling I get from reading about their lives and their contributions to Literature never diminishes. In my own dry seasons when I can’t seem to write a poem, those favorite poets of mine extend their poems to me like oases to the thirsty. 

I write poems.  I study the craft of poetry writing. I taught the craft of writing in middle schools, high schools, and colleges for many years. On the average, I write close to a 1,000 poems a year. I’d write more, but I also write fiction, so I try to balance the two as best I can. Still, to my way of thinking, I am not a poet. I write poems.

If it were possible to count the people in the world who write poetry, and may even profess to be poets, the number might reach the total of our national debt. They are everywhere! Many will confess, or even boast, they know nothing about poetry, but simply allow their hearts to direct the pen or the fingers at the keyboard. I’ve heard some brag that they never in their lives read more than the poems assigned in school, let alone a how-to book on the poetry craft. The poems they write come directly from their inner voices that insist on speaking out, mostly about love and the absence of love.  Some carry business cards with “POET” under their names as if one day someone who holds their card will find it necessary to phone them in a crisis and request a poem be written the way one calls a plumber to repair a leaky faucet. Wanted: Poet. Submit Resumé. And the wage? Surely less than minimum, if at all!

I had a friend in Brooklyn who wasn’t happy unless he threw Yiddish words and expressions into everything he said. He got them from his grandmother, a Russian Jew who had immigrated to America at the turn of the 20^th Century. We were both in the fourth grade at different schools. Nat went to P.S. 55 and I went to Most Holy Trinity School, but we both lived in a predominantly Hasidic Jewish community with only a smattering of the Irish and even fewer Italians. 

Nat loved pulling pranks. I tried to be the good angel on his shoulder, explaining why taking air out of Mr. Finkle’s tires wasn’t very nice. Nat would wave his hand in the air and say, “Finkle Shminkle! What do I care!” Or the time he walked backwards into the Rainbow Theater at the same time the crowd was walking out, so he could avoid paying the quarter admission and have money to buy popcorn and soda. 

“Nat,” I said, horrified at his deceit, “go back and pay the quarter. The Rainbow ain’t free!” Again, Nat would wave his hand and say, “Rainbow Shmainbow, they got lots of quarters. They don’t need mine!”

Who knows what became of my old friend Nat. We moved away. I never even got the chance to tell my friends since my father made the decision to move and the following day the Mayflower van came and hauled our belongings to Flushing Avenue. I often imagine Nat saying to himself or out loud to our circle of buddies, “Sal, Shmal, who needs him!”

I know if I had just once confided in him my new fascination with writing poems back then in 1950, he’d laugh me off with “poet shmoet” and suggest we play stickball on Melrose Avenue or walk to Johnson Ave. and check out the shop that sold used horror comics for a nickel.

So in lieu of Nat, let me say it instead.  “Poet Shmoet!”  Who needs a title to write poetry? Who needs a label to feel validated?  I am sure if I were to ask my poetry heroes like Lorca and Vallejo, Cohen and Daly, Shakespeare and Marlowe, Coleridge and Dante, Marinoni and Quasimodo, “How does it feel to be a famous poet?” they would smile and say, “A poet? Hey, I just write poems.”

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Salvatore Buttaci is a retired teacher and professor whose work has appeared in The Writer, The New York Times, The Christian Science Monitor, and elsewhere here and abroad. He was the 2007 recipient of the $500 Cyber-wit Poetry Award.

His recent flash collection, 200 Shorts, published by All Things That Matter Press, is  available at http://www.amazon.com/200-Shorts-ebook/dp/B004YWKI8O/ref=sr_1_2?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1369920397&sr=1-2&keywords=200+Shorts

England’s Chester University added  200 Shorts to their Flash Fiction Special Collection at Seaborne Library in 2011. http://www.chester.ac.uk/flash.magazine/bibliography%20%20

Buttaci lives with his wife Sharon in West Virginia.   

salvatorebuttaci@yahoo.com

 

The thing about fiction is...

By Alan McDermott

... it isn’t real.

Yeah, I know that’s kinda obvious, but some of the people who have read Gray Justice don’t seem to realise this.


Let’s start at the beginning.

In July 2010 I had the seed of an idea and an empty Word document, and the first thing I needed was a main character.

Male or female? Hmm, good question. I thought about it for a while and decided that as the protagonist would have an SAS [British special military forces] background, I would go with male.

Next, a name. How about Clint Power? Max Thrust? Trenton Steele? Actually, why not go with a normal name? Okay, Dave…Sid…Tom… yeah, Tom. Tom what? Tom Savage!! No, something run-of-the-mill that doesn’t build the guy up as a super hero. Something bland, something … Gray!

Tom Gray!

Okay, so I have the seed of an idea, which is that someone loses a loved one to a repeat offender and sees the punishment handed down by the court as derisory. What should he do?

I know! He starts a petition to demand tougher sentencing guidelines. He goes on Facebook and Twitter and amasses a million followers and they all sign the petition and it goes before parliament and he’s standing outside Number Ten waving a placard and…


No. Where’s the story? Where’s the action, the intrigue? He could trip over a couple of times because he made the placard too big, or…


Stop! That isn’t going to work. He has to do something unique. This is supposed to be a story that grabs readers and takes them somewhere they’ve never been. It shouldn’t read like a few column inches in The Guardian. He could mow down the killer, or kidnap and torture him, or…


Right, that’s enough, Alan! Here’s a hundred bucks, go buy yourself a proper imagination!

What would Stephen King do in this situation? I read Misery, and that was a good book. A woman finds an injured author, her favourite author, and takes him back to her home. Okay, that’s the first couple of chapters. What happens next? Does she call an ambulance and have him taken to hospital? If she’d done that, it would have been King’s shortest and worst story EVER! Instead, she breaks his ankles to stop him escaping and makes him write a novel about her favourite character, one that doesn’t see the heroine die.

Possibility of that happening? Slim to none is my guess, but it made for great entertainment. I was reading it and wondering “How is he going to get out of this?”

Okay, another few light years and I’ll still be a million miles from Stephen King, but that’s the kind of thing you need to give an audience. Put the protagonist in an unheard of situation and have the reader wonder how they could possibly come through the other end.

Okay, got it. He kidnaps not just the killer, but four other repeat offenders and holds them in a disused warehouse. He tells the government that he wants tougher sentencing or his hostages die.
Hmm, it’s missing something. The authorities would soon locate him, if they even gave a shit about the criminals in the first place. So we need a deterrent. What could possibly stop the police wanting to rush the place? Think! Think! I know, he’s planted a bomb somewhere, and if they kill him, the bomb will go off!

Now we’re getting somewhere.

Yeah, a standoff. He’s got the hostages, and the police won’t make a move. So now what? What has Tom achieved? Nothing. The news channels will report about a hostage situation, but Tom’s grievances are falling on deaf ears. The police and politicians might sympathise after what he’s been through, but it all boils down to him committing a criminal act.

Tom needs to reach the people, but how? He builds a website and streams video of the hostages, and tells the government that they mustn’t interfere with it, otherwise…What? And how long is this going to go on for?


Let’s go back to the start. We need to make Tom a man with nothing left to lose. Okay, his wife, overcome with grief at the loss of their son, takes her own life. We still have the problem of a timescale, though. Is this going to go on forever? And where’s the government’s incentive to play ball?


Got it! Tom will reveal the location of the device on Friday, then take his own life! He now has nothing to lose, so why not? But what will he have achieved by then? Think, Alan!


I know! He wants to change the sentencing guidelines, but he thinks the government won’t listen. Why not let the people of Britain vote on the changes? They can ignore one lunatic, but not the entire population! Let the people speak!

All we need now is a set of changes he wants to make, but we have to bear in mind who is creating them. This is a simple ex-soldier, not a politician. Successive governments have had numerous experts working on the perfect judicial system and it still isn’t quite there, so it would be crazy to have Tom come up with the perfect solution. It wouldn’t be in keeping with the character I’m trying to create. Instead, I’ll just have to give him a bunch of unworkable ideas and throw in some counter-arguments to balance things out.

Should I mention rehabilitation and crime prevention as possible solutions, or attacking the root of the problem at an early stage through school workshops and the like? Would anyone in Tom’s situation think like that, or would they just be damn angry and want to see the criminals punished? I’ll err on the side of the latter.

So, that’s the process. I think of situations for my characters, I give them the appropriate personalities and opinions, and let them get on with it.

Anyway, back to the purpose of this post: Some people seem to think that Tom’s thoughts and ideals are actually a reflection of MY feelings towards the British judicial system (here's a classic example). If you’re among that number, then you must also assume that Stephen King condones the kidnapping and hobbling of injured authors! Is that what you really think?

So please, when you read this book, just remember it’s a work of FICTION! Whether you agree or disagree with Tom’s ideals or methods is entirely up to you, but your argument will be with a fictional character.  

Alan McDermott is author of the Tom Gray trilogy: Gray Justice, Gray Resurrection and Gray Redemption. His blog is jambalian.

Great writers on 10 rules for writing fiction

Photo: “8/26 Day Write-a-thon for 826 Valencia” by Flickr user Steve Rhodes
under Creative Commons 2.0 License

Back in February 2010, the Guardian asked a number of well-established writers to offer their 10 Rules of Writing in response to Elmore Leonard’s own. Those who responded include: Margaret Atwood, Roddy Doyle, Helen Dunmore, Richard Ford, Jonathan Franzen, Esther Freud, PD James, Michael Moorcock, Helen Simpson, Zadie Smith, Colm Tóibín, Sarah Waters and Elmore Leonard himself.

The results, which can be read make interesting and entertaining reading.

Here are some of my favourite extracts:

Elmore Leonard:

Never open a book with weather… The reader is apt to leaf ahead look­ing for people.

Avoid prologues: they can be ­annoying, especially a prologue ­following an introduction…

Never use a verb other than "said" to carry dialogue.

Never use an adverb to modify the verb "said" ... he admonished gravely. To use an adverb this way (or almost any way) is a mortal sin. 

My most important rule: if it sounds like writing, I rewrite it.

Zadie Smith:

Try to read your own work as a stranger would read it, or even better, as an enemy would.

There is no "writer's lifestyle". All that matters is what you leave on the page.

Tell the truth through whichever veil comes to hand – but tell it. 

 

Esther Freud:

Trust your reader. Not everything needs to be explained. If you really know something, and breathe life into it, they'll know it too.

Cut out the metaphors and similes. In my first book I promised myself I wouldn't use any and I slipped up ­during a sunset in chapter 11. I still blush when I come across it.

Hilary Mantel:

Are you serious about this? Then get an accountant.

Michael Moorcock:

For a good melodrama study the famous "Lester Dent master plot formula" which you can find online. It was written to show how to write a short story for the pulps, but can be adapted successfully for most stories of any length or genre.

(Wikipedia gives this as Michael Moorcock’s summary of the Lester Dent master plot formula: Split your six-thousand-word story up into four fifteen hundred word parts. Part one, hit your hero with a heap of trouble. Part two, double it. Part three, put him in so much trouble there's no way he could ever possibly get out of it...All your main characters have to be in the first third. All your main themes and everything else has to be established in the first third, developed in the second third, and resolved in the last third.) 

If possible have something going on while you have your characters delivering exposition or philosophising. This helps retain dramatic tension.

Ignore all proferred rules and create your own, suitable for what you want to say.

There is much more to savour in these lists. I recommend checking out the full article. Enjoy!

Seb Kirby

Seb Kirby is the author of the James Blake thriller series (Take No More, Regret No More and the soon-to-be-released Forgive No More) and the Raymond Bridges sci-fi thriller series (Double Bind). 

He says: "I was raised with books – my grandfather ran a mobile library in Birmingham and my parents inherited a random selection of the books. They weren't much interested in them; they were piled up in a box room, gathering dust. I would disappear in there and resurrect much used classics – Zane Gray's Riders of the Purple Sage, HG Wells' The Invisible Man, Charles Dickens' A Tale of Two Cities and more obscure stuff that I don't now recall. I was hooked. I've been an avid reader ever since."

Criticism and Writing

                       

"When it comes to reading, I love it. Giving or receiving criticism, constructive or otherwise? Not so much.

My main love is fiction - mainly romance novels. I do read other fiction as well, if I find something that just sounds too interesting to pass up.

After I read it, I give it a rating on Goodreads and you have the option to write a review. Most often, I pass up this option and simply star the book. The reason is...I am not sure what to put in the review and if I didn't like something, I find it difficult to tell the person why I didn't like it because it is often just the way I feel.

I don't feel that it is my place to tell people what is wrong with their writing. Sure, I could see informing the writer of grammatical errors, spelling mistakes and basic information that is wrong that perhaps should not have been gotten wrong. Anything else and I feel like I am stepping on the person's view of the world - or even the world they made up, if that is what they are interested in.

Those romance novels I mentioned reading? I can't count how many times I've been made fun of for reading them. Tripe, ridiculous garbage, 'it is just porn for women except it's not images, it is words', 'romance novels are not real writing', etc. I've been asked why I don't go read something with more substance.

I instantly ask them...'Have you ever actually read a romance novel?' Better yet, have they ever tried to research to write a romance novel based on historical times in say...Victorian England? It is a lot of work and reading and getting all the facts straight. Hours and hours of it, in fact. I think if you've never even read a few different items in a specific genre, you have no business commenting on how stupid you think they are.

Don't get me wrong. It's not wrong to dislike something that another person wrote. You can dislike it and think it is stupid but you can just say 'this is not my cup of tea' and move the heck on. I don't like horror - at all, period. What do I do? I don't watch it and I don't read it. If it doesn't sound interesting, I don't spend time on it. Heck, I am even choosy when it comes to who and what reading I will do in romance novels. I have my faves, I admit but I will give new authors an opportunity and if I don't like it, I simply don't read them again.

I have to say that for the most part, people who read someone on a regular basis are very constructive and do an excellent job of telling the author why this book or writing didn't stand up to the other things they've done and they are not the people I am speaking of. Then you have those who said they chose this book because of the description but it was misleading.

These are not the people I am speaking of. Being respectful and telling someone simply why you didn't like their story is fine - I'd say that in my opinion, most authors would want to know what you think or what they could improve on. It's the blatant disrespect and making fun of other people's work that is disgusting.

Sometimes, a book just doesn't do anything for me and that's okay. Honestly, if I really didn't even read the whole book or knew from the beginning that I wasn't going to enjoy it, I don't rate it. I have experienced disappointment by authors I normally read and it is usually a feeling of 'well, this story wasn't as good as the others' but there isn't necessarily something wrong with the story.

Really, I wrote this because I'm afraid of this kind of response to my writing but for an entirely different reason. When people criticize something I do, I have always taken it personally. Of course, I want to know how I can improve, what didn't work and what did work, etc. I expect to receive these kinds of things in response to my writing.  I just don't want to be told it is stupid by people who really aren't into it but read my writing or book anyway and feel they can tell me what tripe it is for the heck of it.

I think if you want to be respected for your work, then you should always be respectful of other people's work."

Cassandra Janey

Follow me on Twitter @CassJaney