The height of vanity . . .

5/10/2012

I'm not as cool as Davy Vain, but I'm pretty cool. And pretty vain: I feel like a bit of a dickhead for making a website about me and my writing. I'd much rather run a website about wrestling botches or redheads. (Don't click that redheads link if you're at work or under 18.) (Don't click that Botchamania link unless you really like watching pro wrestlers make painful, hilarious mistakes.)

But here it all is anyways. You've been on the world wide web before, so I'll spare you the bit about what each of those links at the top do. If you haven't been on the world wide web before and this is the absolute first page you've ever visited, let me just say, "Hey." Also, good luck, you're either 80+ or a toddler and either way shit's fucked up and it's not getting easier.

The main reason I made this is because I've got a book coming out on Jersey Devil Press this fall, and I figured it's about time I start promoting myself and having an "online presence" as they say in "the biz," which is short for "business," which is short for "nobody says biz, asshole." Also, it's nice to have links to all of my publications in one place, as my parents can now ignore them all--again--in one felled swoop.

Just kidding. My parents love me. But they don't really read my stuff. I told them to "butt out of my life, JEEZ" when I was 14 and they listened way too well. You can come back now, Scott and Diane. I'm ready to hang.

I feel better already. Right. Right?

Let's go.

RW

11 Comments

Debra

5/11/2012 12:45:36 am

Who knew you were so sweet?!

Werner

5/11/2012 04:48:09 pm

I did!

Marie Marshall link

5/11/2012 04:38:00 pm

Samuel says I should hit you with a sonnet.

M
__________
Marie Marshall
author/poet/editor
Scotland
http://mairibheag.com
http://kvennarad.wordpress.com

5/11/2012 04:48:36 pm

He's right. ryan.j.werner@gmail.com

Hit me.

5/11/2012 04:57:52 pm

"Why don't we do the concert right here?"

5/11/2012 05:00:53 pm

I'm front row. Crank it up.

5/11/2012 05:22:42 pm

I used to dream in iambic pentameter. I wrote sonnets to become disciplined in writing poetry. I figured that gave legitimacy to my free and experimental writing. I hardly ever write in pentameter any more, but I have been associate editor at a magazine for sonnets (now defunct) and also helped to edit a huge anthology of modern sonnets which should be out by the end of the year. Okay, so here is one of my old ones. It's in memory of Charles Bukowski, because I thought he would scowl and bitch about it but secretly be pleased:

It came to me today that you are dead,
as I sat down to east my ham-on-rye;
I started crying, choked on bits of bread -
just who the hell are you to say "Don't try"?
How many hours we trudged behind Delane
along the dusty sidewalks of LA,
then slipped inside a bar to ease the pain
with bourbon, and then somehow lost a day.
Were you a shy kid? Boy! You've had some fights
since those young days - we never count the cost -
but not like this; your crowding leukocytes
ganged up on you, that's one fight that you lost...
and - damn! - what happened to our crazy love,
who gave that last, great obstacle a shove?

5/12/2012 03:29:19 am

When I stared writing sonnets, I was told that the rules are there, but lax. I didn't totally buy into it--the woman who told me that called some of her poems sonnets because "they're sort of shaped like sonnets" even thought though don't follow any of the rules--and people wonder why I don't mess around with grad school stuff--but I thought my work was better if I stuck to the rhyme scheme and syllables-per-line and ditched the iambic pentameter.

You've done a good job following the rules pretty much by the book, and really the only things that feel like deviations of the meter to me are the first half of Lines 3, 8, 9 and some odd spots here and there. But that shit's hard to do--that's why my lazy ass didn't do it.

The big things I'm concerned about when I write sonnets are how natural the lines sound and how interesting they are. Lines 11 & 12 stand out to me because of "crowding leukocytes" ("crowding" as an adjective looks like a verb and throws me off, and even though it's grammatically fine, it's a bit of a weird stumble) and "that's one fight that you lost" (the second "that" sounds like it's there just to meet the syllable requirement, and "you lost that fight" sounds more natural even if it gets rid of the "one," which you wouldn't need anyways because the new syntax really emphasizes the single "that" and has a similar effect).

I imagine you have to stick to a lot of one- and two-syllable words to make the meter work, but let's pretend we're not dealing with it. I feel like I got off easy, in a way, by choosing to do heroic crowns of sonnets. Even though it's a giant pain in the ass on every other level, I could really spread myself out. I had enough room to say everything wanted to say, reference everything I wanted to reference. With only 14 lines, you've really go to pick what you want to say about Buk carefully.

You've got Ham On Rye, "Don't Try," L.A., drinking, bars, fighting, cancer, and crazy love. These are all the right tropes from the dude's mythology, but in the interest of space I'd say L2-L4 can be cut, or at least rewritten. You don't need the HoR reference and I like that it opens with a scene and then switches, but you can make the scene stronger than eating a sandwich and choking on the bread (which felt a little forced to meet the rhyme).

L5-L8 just need a facelift. You can do better than "dusty sidewalks." And I think Bukowski didn't lose days, I think he annihilated them. There's always that fight, and I think you can embed that more in there. L9-L12 I already talked about, and I think once you rearrange those awkward moments, the new stuff will help it fall into place, but it's a good arc--S1 is you, S2 is you and Buk, S3 is Buk by himself.

Ending couplets are always the most fun. I think the idea of love/shove can work as is, but "great obstacle" rubs me wrong. I think if you can manifest the "great obstacle" into something concrete--a horse race, a whore, etc--then it'll really have a punch to it.

The main thing is to not cop his tone, but to weave his tone in with yours. Use your colors, but use his brush. I hope some of this helped. Like I said, it's all guesswork anyways.

5/12/2012 06:48:17 am

Well it kinda helped. It's an old poem, finished, no more tinkering, and published several times. Thanks. :)

Lines 3, 8, and 9 are perfectly regular but the meter is softened. The thing to remember is that the iambs are definitely not hammer blows but a ripple. You're talking to one who knows, here! ;)

5/12/2012 09:18:05 am

I believe you that you know, no doubt! Those ones just stood out to me as a little odd, but I'll be the first to admit that I have no idea about meter. Might be why I hate horses, too.

5/12/2012 02:54:41 pm

Meter has been around for a long time. Iambic pentameter was devised for Greek drama, but in fact has its origins in the rhythms of ordinary speech. A line of pentameter is easy to commit to memory and to speak within a single breath. It makes a good servant and a bad master - I have seen countless poets who strain to make a sonnet rather than a poem, and the result always betrays that.

I regard my sonnets as apprentice-pieces. I once said of them that now I had proved that I could draw, I was entitled to pickle a shark and call it 'art'. As for 'crowding', a present participle used adjectivally, well, welcome to my native language because that's how it works and how I use it to its fullest extent.

It's okay not to like horses, so long as you don't shoot too many of them.

The height of vanity . . .

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