Tina Bass wrote:
>> and where ever you meet with a passage which you think is
>> particularly fine,
>> strike it out.'"
> Jon,
>
> I know what he/you are saying but I've always thought this to be a
> rather destructive approach. I would replace 'strike it out' with
> 'treat with caution and suspicion'.
>
> Tina
>
I learned a variant in a really sick phrase of that editorial maxim:
Murder Your Darlings. It acquired its full impact at age 34 when my
first child was born. Since then, I can't help think of the butchery of
the Macduff household or Sharon Tate's disembowelment/abortion at the
hands of those Manson fiends. Murder Your Darlings, my ass. In other
words, when you have the poem down to a pile of kitchen trash, send it
to Paris Review.
I'm in the process of going through two poems I think have the
*potential* to be particularly good, and I am looking for the extraneous
details, the sidebars, the mental masturbation that for years has led me
into head-trips and disfigurements. That's a mindset: "this is not
fine, it belongs in another poem or in the trash, it doesn't fit here."
That is judgment, consultation with others, and (*if you're so
inclined!!!!!!!*) prayer and meditation. It is not anyone's ad hoc
rulebook.
Who said it, Gogo or Didi--the final insult, "Crrrrrrritic!!!"
ken
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Ken Wolman andreachenier.net rainermaria.typepad.com
DO NOT ADJUST YOUR MIND: IT IS REALITY THAT IS MALFUNCTIONING
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