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You got To Pick A Pocket Or Two – Distraction and Writing
You Got to Pick a Pocket or Two – Distraction and Writing
The thing is, as writers we are con-persons (p.c. or what D.B.r’s?) We distract the reader with action, plot and in the meantime persuade them to a point of view.
Magic really, comedy.
In poetry we are no different – distract – persuade.
Hudson exists, Hudson doesn’t exist.
Dead Beat lives, Dead Beat is dead.
Learn the art and craft of distraction. “You got to pick a pocket or two boys, you got to pick a pocket or two.”
The Shameful Plot – Saddam Hussein
Dead Beat as you know rejects the Glitteratti. So in theory the coverage of Saddam Hussein’s trial is not a subject for D. B,’s concern. Yet not so, Dead Beat is foaming at the mouth. Listen to this: “The problem really is that this tribunal has not shown itself to be fair and impartial — not only by international standards, but by Iraqi standards,” Chandra Muzaffar, president of the Malaysian-based International Movement for a Just World, also voiced concerns that Saddam’s trial “violated many established norms of international jurisprudence.” In truth, I think Saddam Hussein was most probably a horrific individual. However we know as writers we have to get at the truth. The trial of Saddam Hussein was a pre-write, not even a first draft. We knew what we wanted to say before we said it. If we settle for this, we know nothing, we learn nothing and on it goes. Writing seeks a far more important element, it seeks the truth. Nothing was learned here. No one sought to learn anything, it appears. Execute the executioner. As humans we are none the wiser, as humans we are closer to death. Shame.
Man Booker Prize 2006 – Pandering to the Parade
Hudson wishes to remind you that Dead Beat does not endorse and is not responsible for the Man Booker Prize.
Booker juries are notorioulsy fickle and in general incapable of making a decision. In other words they pander to the parade.
Drums and trumpets desireable.
W.A.D.R.
With All Due Respect
Books were never meant to be compared, put into competition, challenged in the high jump.
Us authors are a sorry lot. We start out with hight intentions and settle for hurdling over extremely low positions.
Hudson and Apollinaire Go Wireless
Hudson’s muse, Del-ight, was reminding Hudson of his love for Apollinaire.
Hudson says he has fond memories of smoke filled evenings with Picasso, Apollinaire, Max Jacob, Satie, and Andre Derain in the cafes of Paris. “We were going to change the world,” Hudson claims, “and we did. Forget this reckless internet and those appalling blogs, we had the telephone, the wireless telegraph and the phonograph – the rapid succession of frames in silent movies. We were the future. We were the now.”
“Hudson, I keep telling you, you are only three months old.”
“Dead Beat you are passé.”
Man Booker 2006
Hudson wishes to remind you that Dead Beat does not endorse and is not responsible for the Man Booker Prize.
Booker juries are notorioulsy fickle and in general incapable of making a decision. In other words they pander to the parade.
Drums and trumpets desireable.
W.A.D.R.
With All Due Respect
Books were never meant to be compared, put into competition, challenged in the high jump
Diegesis and Mimesis
Dead Beat thinks that maybe it’s time to discuss diegesis and mimesis. Well you would, wouldn’t you early on a Friday morning with four little Dead Beats running beneath your feet since they don‘t have a school to go to.
A diegesis is often defined as the world in which the situation and events occur.The diegesis includes objects, events, spaces and the characters that inhabit them, including things, actions, and attitudes not explicitly presented in the work but inferred by the audience. That audience constructs a diegetic world from the material presented in a narrative.
Mimesis is an imitation or a representation. Thus the creator must be selective, choosing aspects of whatever experience or object is being represented. There are boundaries imposed, and these boundaries simply tell us that what is contained within cannot be real.
In diegesis the creator addresses the audience directly. Interestingly for all us ‘screamers of show and don’t tell” Diegesis is thought of as telling. The author narrates action indirectly and describing what is in the character’s mind and emotions.
In mimesis the author shows what is going on in characters’ inner thoughts and emotions through his external actions.
Now here’s the sucker punch: story refers to all the audience infers about the events that occur in the diegesis on the basis of what they are shown by the plot. Story is always more extensive than plot.
How Do I know What I Think Until I See What I Have Said
Dead Beat”, Hugo chided, “you must tell them more. You’re letting those folks off the hook.”
“So Dick what do you have in mind?”
“Simple really: I often make these remarks to a beginning poetry writing class. You’ll never be a poet until you realize that everything I say today and this quarter is wrong. It may be right for me, but it is wrong for you. Every moment, I am, without wanting or trying to, telling you to write like me. But I hope you learn to write like you. In a sense, I hope I don’t teach you how to write but how to teach yourself how to write. At all times keep your crap detector on. If I say something that helps, good. If what I say is of no help, let it go. Don’t start arguments. They are futile and take us away from our purpose. As Yeats noted, your important arguments are with yourself. If you don’t agree with me, don’t listen. Think about something else.
When you start to write, you carry to the page one of two attitudes, though you may not be aware of it. One is that all music must conform to truth. The other, that all truth must conform to music. If you believe the first, you are making your job very difficult, and you are not only limiting the writing of poems to something done only by the very witty and clever, such as Auden, you are weakening the justification for creative writing programs. So you can take that attitude if you want, but you are jeopardizing my livelihood as well as your chances of writing a good poem. If the second attitude is right, then I still have a job. Let’s pretend it is right because I need the money. Besides, if you feel truth must conform to music, those of us who find life bewildering and who don’t know what things mean, but love the sounds of words enough to fight through draft after draft of a poem, can go on writing–try to stop us.
One mark of a beginner is his impulse to push language around to make it accommodate what he has already conceived to be the truth, or, in some cases, what he has already conceived to be the form. Even Auden, clever enough at times to make music conform to truth,was fond of quoting the woman in the Forster novel who said something like, “How do I know what I think until I see what I’ve said.”
A poem can be said to have two subjects, the initiating or triggering subject, which starts the poem or “causes” the poem to be written, and the real or generated subject, which the poem comes to say or mean, and which is generated or discovered in the poem during the writing. That’s not quite right because it suggests that the poet recognizes the real subject. The poet may not be aware of what the real subject is but only have some instinctive feeling that the poem is done.”
“You’re getting at me, Dick, aren’t you?” Dead Beat asks. “I do go on about discovering the poem or story through the writing.”
“You do, Dead Beat, and in a way you are right, but really does the writer recognise this?”
