I did one once as Myra Hindley in prison. For those who don't know, she was
one of the infamous "Moors Murderers", who along with Ian Brady tortured and
killed several children, back in the 1960s.
It wasn't a successful poem, per se, but I never managed to figure out why
or how.
But there is this compulsion, not so much to excuse, as to understand if we
can.
joanna
----- Original Message -----
From: "Ken Wolman" <[log in to unmask]>
To: <[log in to unmask]>
Sent: Friday, September 30, 2005 2:17 PM
Subject: Re: Version 2: Lynndie England to her Baby Son
> Janet Jackson wrote:
>
>>This is bloody good, Ken.
>>
>>I don't think you should delete the "asshole" bit, with its
>>touch of surreal black humour.
>>
>>Writing as a specific other person - I have done it but never had
>>the guts to put their name on it. Yet.
>>
>>One function of poetry is to express the inexpressible;
>>to give words to those who have none. Go for it!
>>
>>Janet
>>
> I wrote as a woman once before, 1992. It was a catastrophe. I think it's
> one of the few poems I ever wrote that I destroyed. I wrote something
> else several years ago involving one of my aunts, who I placed in the
> Triangle Shirtwaist Factory in March 1911, when it burned with horrific
> loss of life. I don't know that she was there, but I gave her "her" voice
> in the last section of the poem, and I don't think much of what I did
> there, either--I felt like I was digging up a family grave for my
> convenience. I didn't plan to write about Pvt England in her own voice,
> the first version of this was in third person and was really savage.
> Putting it in her mouth didn't soften it quite as much as it made me try
> to imagine how she'd think. It just came to me the other morning, do it
> in first person, not "Write like a woman."
>
> Jury is still out on "asshole." What would Lynndie England think of some
> white-hair old guy from New Jersey writing down her thoughts?--yet
> appreciating for a second that he's doing so.
>
> Ken, clueless in Princeton
>
> --
> Kenneth Wolman
> Proposal Development Department
> Room SW334
> Sarnoff Corporation
> 609-734-2538
>
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