But in some ways, "Show don't tell" and "Write what you know" are the worst advice to give to writers. It leads to a lot of bad breakup poems, lint-mining navel-gazing or the opposite, tales of heroism and grandeur like saving people from burning buildings and how brave your grandaddy was in the war.
But either way, I'd rather you give me an image, a mystery, a circumstance and let me fill in the rest. Don't guide my by the hand, I don't need a nanny. Jack London writes rousing adventure yarns, Proust writes endless semi-autbiographical minutiae and there's plenty of far better stories in between than you're going to give me in your poem.
So show me something new. Surprise me. Because if I've heard it before I guarantee you I've heard it better.
Or if you're going to do the same old thing, hit me with a big fat twist on an old favorite. Like this interpretation of a traditional English ballad.
In a Prominent Bar in Secaucus One Day
X.J. Kennedy
Rose a lady in skunk with a top-heavy sway
Raised a knobby red finger - all turned from their beer -
While with eyes bright as snowcrust she sang high and clear:
"Now who of you'd think from an eyeload of me
That I once was a lady as proud as can be?
Oh I'd never sit down by a tumbledown drunk
If it wasn't, my dears, for the high cost of junk.
"All the gents used to swear that the white of my calf
Beat the down of a swan by a length and a half
In the kerchief of linen I caught to my nose
Ah, there never fell snot, but a little gold rose.
"I had seven gold teeth and a toothpick of gold
My Virginia cheroot with a leaf of it rolled
And I'd light it each time with a thousand in cash -
Why the bums used to fight if I flicked them an ash.
"Once the toast of the Biltmore, the belle of the Taft
I would drink bottle beer at the Drake, never draft
And dine at the Astor on Salisbury steak
With a clean table cloth for each bite I did take.
"In a car like the Roxy, I'd roll to the track
A steel-guitar trio, a bar in the back
And the wheels made no noise, they turned ever so fast,
Still it took you ten minutes to see me go past.
"When the horses bowed down to me that I might choose,
I bet on them all for I hated to lose.
Now I'm saddled each night for my butter and eggs
And the broken threads race down the backs of my legs.
"Let you hold in mind, girls, that your beauty must pass
Like a lovely white clover that rusts with its grass.
Keep your bottoms off bar stools and marry you young
Or be left - an old barrel with many a bung.
"For when time takes you out for a spin in his car
You'll be hard-pressed to stop him from going too far
And be left by the roadside, for all your good deeds,
Two toadstools for tits and a face full of weeds."
All the house raised a cheer, but the man at the bar
Made a phone call and up pulled a red patrol car
And she blew us a kiss as they copped her away
From that prominent bar in Secaucus, N.J.
No comments:
Post a Comment