Comments on: Have I Ever Told You About My Love/Hate Relationship With Confessional Poetry?

By: deborahb

deborahb — Tue, 05 Aug 2008 12:27:45 +0000

What a simply fantastic post!

That’s all I have to say.

By: Bear

Bear — Wed, 30 Jul 2008 22:14:03 +0000

ooooh… is that vacuum cleaner thing REALLY necessary? couldn’t we use something else instead? :)
joke aside, it’s a great post “you write what you know” – sounds like “law number one” in a writer’s decalog! thanks!

By: Corey Redekop

Corey Redekop — Wed, 30 Jul 2008 20:42:42 +0000

My poetry
lacks all knowledge
of verse,
syntax,
or scheme.

But my pain is
real.

It must
be
real
as I’m compelled
to write
bad oh so bad bad bad beyond bad
poetry about it.

By: David Keck

David Keck — Wed, 30 Jul 2008 17:04:27 +0000

Hey Catherynne (friend of your editor here and also a writer of things shelved in the fantasy section). And you are quite right that the poetry leaks through in your work. (Oh, just here and there, you know). Its lovely headlong stuff. Characters and scenes all discombobulatingly and convincingly mythical.

When I’m working, my poetic compulsions just scramble the narrative flow. I remember one editor complaining that she was too old for all the “suddenly here” and “vividly there” stuff. Like navigating by flashbulb, I think.

Still. Fight the poetic power!

By: Adam

Adam — Wed, 30 Jul 2008 16:49:13 +0000

Confession–though a genre of poetry (Robert Lowell, Sylvia Plath…)–is hardly required to make poetry, as becomes very apparent once you begin to read poetry, contemporary or otherwise. I write this not to start a fight, for I find this blog to be very intelligent and enjoyable, but because too many people do nurse the notion that poetry is either “difficult” or that it is what they wrote in their journals when they were 14–too often poetry is seen as the realm of the “creamy center of genuine experience”–this is dangerous becuase it leads to what poets call–with derision–sentimental poetry.

What you’re saying about being honest, well that applies to all the arts. Good art is honest, even if honestly sarcastic, or honestly absurd. Honesty isn’t the whole answer–there’s more to good art than being honest–but it’s a component I find lacking in much of the fiction and poetry I read.

You are right, of course, that poetry can be valuable to a writer in terms of improving prose; more fiction writers should read and write poetry, though most shouldn’t publish any of it.

By: On Confessional Poetry | Why Mice Sing

On Confessional Poetry | Why Mice Sing — Wed, 30 Jul 2008 11:23:08 +0000

[...] read over at Ecstatic Days on how the failings of genre and confessional poetry can be united to make a better story. A few [...]

By: My Spam « Nautiloid Burblings

My Spam « Nautiloid Burblings — Wed, 30 Jul 2008 03:01:04 +0000

[...] before I zapped them. The first one could be relevant to Catherynne M Valente’s somewhat lewd posting involving inappropriate usage of vacuum cleaners by male [...]

By: Lola

Lola — Wed, 30 Jul 2008 02:40:19 +0000

I just told my poet friend about this article. I can’t wait till she gets to the end. She’ll love it.

This explains why I’m good at fantasy. I obsessively wrote just such poetry in high school. It was probably awful but I definitely got to that inner core of suffering that’s now pretty easy to dredge up. I also think I’m naturally overemotional. That helps. Great essay though.

By: Catherynne M. Valente

Catherynne M. Valente — Wed, 30 Jul 2008 02:22:09 +0000

JM: Of course, for women writers, it’s a metaphorical penis, and so we experience all the artistic beenfits with less chafing. Jealousy is clearly what keeps us from literary respect.

By: J M McDermott

J M McDermott — Wed, 30 Jul 2008 02:09:16 +0000

“But doctor, Cat Valente TOLD ME to do it. She said it was important to make me a better artist…”

“Well, I confess that the sexual tension you experience over the next six weeks of your physician-mandated abstinence will likely assist your art. In the future, I suggest just practicing a little willpower instead of using a vacuum cleaner.”

;)