Neal Bailey, for Camp Horror
I recently started editing a selection of my poetry for the last 10 years. That’s 1,500 pieces of work, some great, some lousy, most in fact, and a large portion in the middle, ones that would work with a few more moments of inspiration.
The arc of writing is a strange and slow one, and the old adage is true: The best work you’ve ever produced is that which you’re working on in the current moment, informed by all of the previous work and experiences, sprinkled with the spices of just that much more life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness (with the occasional dose of repressive garbage just to keep the angst flowing).
Everyone laments their high school work. Who couldn’t? The sad thing about that is it was your poetry at its most honest. Or, in some cases, your prose at its most honest. You hadn’t written that novel, you hadn’t broached that number 100 on the pages you’d written, so you imitated in a form of flattery and you pushed in the name of doing something bold and original that had never been done before (not realizing that everything HAS been done, you just haven’t read it yet, not at 14).
Works to please a lover, works to please family, works to please a teacher (you may have wanted her to be a lover, perhaps, hrm?) I think the general pattern is works to please. This, I find, is where the bulk of my imitation poetry comes. Where you take an existing work and riff off it. Odd that I find in old age, many poets return to this, stealing a line, alluding, it’s almost unconscious, but a poem with reference is widely regarded as bad unless it’s done by a person of reference, and then it magically comes good. At any rate, the point being, you return to that womb of writing, inevitably.
I find that as I get older my work turns toward the universal perspective. I wrote a poem once, about the strains of work and school and the urge to just conform and let the prose wash out in a way that everyone would like instead of something that you could sleep on:
A bottled up
Stuck pig
Over a Bunson roast.
(Sleep in the arms,
Work in the head)
Even the most
Broad of tessellate patterns
Eventually weaves toward center
And conforms.
It scares me, as I edit now, thinking toward an audience. The universal instinct of the child-like (and pure) mind is to tell the people who want you to write in generalities to go screw themselves. Rightly. In fact, that’s still my attitude. I’d rather sell my heart than a product. Many disagree with me about this, and think I’m an idiot. Lord knows I got my share of glib comments in the Dark Idol contest about that, perhaps rightfully.
It’s a matter of ideology.
So the matter that I explore is how to go beyond relating the idea of words to the desired audience, and the recompense of knowing that you put out the works that you think good without estranging the people who share your views (those who don’t might line your pockets, but aren’t really that strategically enervating).
I delete many of the poems that I put in earlier collections I put together. The earlier collections have a lot of poems that tell people who I am and what I believe and they’re very showy, very flashy, almost as if I have something to prove. There’s an emphasis on the word, an emphasis on showing what I can do with meter and verse (even if people would never in a million years see the structure...most poets don’t even see the structure inherent in most works).
Now, as I push forward, I find myself putting out works that don’t really have much flash or dazzle at all. Works that aren’t really about me, but rather, the world around me. I’ve become more of a chronicler of the things that happen around me rather than a voice for my own output. When I want people to know who I am and what I think, I write a political essay or a review in the AICN style, the reviewer is a part of the experience style. Some might call it participant observation. That’s a little overbearing and dramatic for me.
And the odd thing is, it’s making my work more appealing. People want “look what just happened” stories instead of “This is righteous and we should fight for it”.
The polemic, it would seem, is an extremist, shallow vision of youth to most audiences.
The thing is, I AM a polemic, but as my writing style matures, for some reason, the works become less polemic. Whereas before I just spouted to show people what I was, now I AM that person, it remains unstated but true, and the works reflect that subtlety.
Don’t confuse this for an essay saying that’s the way YOU should be. That would firstly undermine my point, and secondarily be stupid. I don’t know what the heck you should be. I’m just sharing my experience here, for the sake of asking you if you share a similar one. If you do, you’re probably still reading, and if not, eat a donkey’s ass, you’re gone.
(See? There’s my dilemma. I don’t give a damn if people read or not, but I want to understand the motivations of why or why not.)
A talented (and it should be noted) published artist friend of mine tells me to just write the piece, and let it speak for itself. That’s good for novels, short stories, even essays, but what about the poetry collection, when you have to play editor for yourself?
My overwhelming litmus is anathema to Stephen King’s adage. Write to please your ideal reader, he says, and points to his wife.
I point to myself, which I think goes counter to the point he was making. As long as I can giggle at my own work, I like it.
So what does that say about me that my work is becoming more popular to a wider audience? Am I that broad tessellate patern? Do I weave toward the center and conform?
I shrink back, finding myself listening to bands I would have shot myself for listening to as a kid, and shriek at the prospect of turning old and evil. As we all know, the old are evil and wrong in every way, the last thing I want to become is that.
So this begs my ultimate question and the thesis of this essay: Perhaps the evils and the unflinching march of conformity is necessitated by the passing of time, and occurs with the agents involved without any conscious thought at all, and perhaps is, shudder to think, natural?
Ergo, is it foolish to have been less conformed for so long, or is the ultimate goal of non-conformity still prudent?
And you’re not going to like my answer, my conclusion. But then, if I cared that you did, my point would be even more undermined. Regardless, here it is.
It doesn’t matter. Write the essay, edit the poem, you can’t stop the natural, but you can go to sleep every day knowing that you were true to yourself rather easily, even if that self changes every day and in every possible way.
If my brash and misstated optimism and stances of youth yield to true life stories of overcoming oppression and Carver-esque realism, so be it. I’ll still know if I’m writing a Danielle Steel book no matter how old I get, and shoot myself accordingly.
In the meanwhile, I’ll be turning on Morrissey no matter how much of a pussy I thought he was when I was 14, thank you very much, and I’ll write myself a responsible little punk rock poem.
The volume is still turned up. The death is still to the system. And the bite is now more of a factor than the bark. Old dog, new tricks, that’s all.