The Young Writer’s Curse. Perfection.

By TRB

A young writer must talk so that others will too. Then, the young writer must listen carefully. The young writer must read more than write in search of a passage or path to a style that will surface in a sentence or two as if by magic one day unknown. A young writer must eavesdrop even when it is obvious, must take note of the natural tide of the conversation the rhythm and rhyme of the secret told, the brooding art of the argument.

Dialogue is what people do with their words, and their eyes, and their hands, and their physical stance and their facial expression. And together all of it is dialogue, all of it is the same thing. So describe it; make me understand the various components of the dialogue and how they come together to explain something. Will they explain something that is new to me, something I can use?

Will I read your words and read something new about the world, something new to me? Or will you humor me; will you be glib? Is irony your way out of a room?

Young writers need directions to a house where they can write with more ease than they thought possible. But of course no such house exists. Young writers only wish it did. The young writer must pass through a wound while it is still fresh enough to describe. The young writer must live between these worlds of the wounded and healed, must know denizens on both sides and must never become too attracted to one or the other.

The young writer must never believe lies

The young writer must never learn how to accept rejection.

The young writer must endure all mood swings, every discouragement, depression, anxiety and stress to work. You must become an easy friend of the fractured emotions other people take pills for.

A young writer must think of a young Bob Dylan writing:

"I wish that for just one time you could stand inside my shoes/And just for that one moment I could be you/I wish that for just one time you could stand inside my shoes/ You'd know what a drag it is to see you."

Look at it, consider how easily it slipped off your tongue. Think of it as one of the best insults of the last half century. Yes, and it rhymes. Bob Dylan could write lines like this all day. And did.

Words like Dylan's reside in a world of fearlessness. He is a purposely careless arranger of on-the-move words. He is not afraid to combine them in ways that suit his purpose. Yes, "Johnny's in the basement/Mixing up the medicine/I'm on the pavement/Thinking 'bout the government."

This kind of writing that attacks the written word, similar to what Eminem and others are doing today has been around since the beginning of poetry and prose. You can not be intimidated by words if your desire is to mold them into your own creation, as writers do.

Just as your should never be afraid to write what sounds good to you. And if the words don't strike a chord with others, you just have to get back to something else. It happened. It didn't happen. It could have happened either way. As in most relationships, don't forget your mistakes, but don't lie down with them either.

You must be as brave as T. S. Eliot (1888-1965) when he began to write "Preludes" and wanted to frame a scene in the readers' head so accurately you might think you were there:

"The winter evening settles down/with smells of steaks in passage ways/Six o'clock/The burnt out ends of smoky days,/And now a gusty shower wraps/The grimy scraps/Of withered leaves about you feet./And newspapers from vacant lots;/The showers beat/On broken blinds and chimney pots./And at the corner of the street/A lonely cab-horse steams and stamps./And then the lighting of the lamps."

I can read that passage and be inside of it. Eliot has taken me inside. He accomplished this by going to just such a place and describing as many details of it on paper as he could. Then he took it home and painted it with words. It has been nearly a century and you can still go there. He has preserved it as a "place" forever on a page.

During the First World War there was a young British poet, named Winford Owen(1898 -1918). He was only 25. He wanted to write the war into the reality of those who were not present. This is how he did it in "Anthem For Doomed Youth":

"What passing bells for those who die as cattle/Only the monstrous anger of the guns/Only the stuttering rifles' rapid rattle/Can patter out their hasty orisons/No mockeries now for them, no prayers no bells/Nor any voice of mourning save the choirs/The shrill demented choirs of wailing shells/and bugles calling for them from sad shires/What candles may be held to speed them all?/ Not in the hands of boys but in their eyes/Shall shine the holy glimmers of goodbyes./The pallor of girls' brows shall be their pall: The flowers the tenderness of patient minds,/And each slow dusk a drawing down of blinds."

Owen's poem is nearly a century old but is considered by many to be the most important anti-war poem ever written. Owen died in battle shortly after writing this poem.

When the American-born poet, Sylvia Plath (1932-63) wrote "I Am Vertical," she walked out of the sad life she was living in Britain with a minor poet Ted Hughes, and into the world of her own precious mind.

"But I would rather be horizontal/I am not a tree with my root in the soil/Sucking up minerals and motherly love/So that each March I am glean into leaf/Nor am I the beauty of a garden bed/Attracting my share of Ahs and spectacularly painted/Unknowing I must soon unpetal./Compared with me a tree is immortal/And a flower near not as tall but more startling/And I want the one's longevity and the other's daring/Tonight in the infinitesimal light of the stars/The trees and the flowers have been strewing their cool odors/I walk among them but none of them are noticing/Sometimes I think that when I am sleeping I most perfectly resemble them/Thoughts gone dim/It is more natural to me lying down/Then the sky and I are in open conversation/And I shall be useful when I lie down finally/Then the trees may touch me for once and the flowers have time for me."

The three of these writers were already very talented during their youth. Two died while very young, one by the bullets of war one by suicide. What Owen and Plath could have done for poetry and literature in general will never be known exactly. But it would have been significant. Eliot changed poetry forever by talking the flowers out of it and letting it play with the other boys and girls. He put the Chippendale in the garage and went shopping for Bauhaus pieces. He almost single-handedly saved poetry for several more decades.

Plath's was a tremendous talent unnoticed for too long, mostly due to the sexism of the time. Her husband once referred to her work as "her little projects." It is hard to believe when you read her today and she walks you down that final path to her permanent horizon. You are almost tempted to go with her. Plath didn't spend much time on this earth. She spent just enough time.

When my poetry was first published in Rolling Stone, I was not a believing poet but a journalist. (I was also not an Eliot, not a Plath or an Owen) I remember Charles Perry, the poetry editor telling me, "I read it, I like it, I print it." But newspapers became my home and later the classroom. As a teacher of writing I learned for the first time how difficult my own writing life had been. Now I knew something about my history - told to me by students who were not living when I experienced it.

One young woman was always at my desk after class. She had written a short story that, on first reading, made me sit up. Now she was busily "perfecting" her work. "As I am sure you know, it can always be better," she told me.

"I don't know that," I replied.

I never told her but it has been my experience that some young writers are too critical of their own work. Have I taken too long to get that across? Yes I have, but perfection can be awfully dull. Sometimes you have to accept imperfection, even embrace it. Especially if it becomes part of the literary atmosphere of your story or poem.

Like a talk with your father on a rocking boat filled with sun and surrounded with tiny waves like mirrors blinding you, and when you look up your father is gone - is not a sentence. But I enjoyed writing it because it amused me. And who will take away my birthday for this?

I hate to resort to John Lennon and Paul McCartney to make this point. But after all they were among the most successful songwriters of the 20th century. There is a story sometimes told by Paul. He had just finished the lyrics for "Hey Jude," a song he co-wrote with John. He told John that he was not satisfied with a line in the song that goes: "The movement you need is on your shoulder." Paul wrote it but did not like it because he could not explain it's meaning.

Lennon told McCartney that it was one of his favorite lines in the song and they should keep it. They did.

What did Lennon like about the line?

That he could not explain its meaning.