One for the Writers
I saw a question online that frustrated me, and maybe it’s why I dislike poetry. “I’ve been focused more on rhyme than on meter,” the frustrated author wrote, “and an editor pointed this out to me today.” First of all, fuck your editor.
I had a short story lit class in college, and it’s one of only two classes I ever talk about twenty-some years later. In it, the professor spent an entire semester going hard in the paint about grammar; every day, hammering and welding into place these strict, rigid, unforgiving lessons about proper diction and delivery. On the very last day of instruction before watching the original Star Wars trilogy for our final, she deconstructed the entire semester in one sentence: “We must learn, we must master, the laws of grammar so we can break them masterfully in our writing, knowing which we broke, why we broke them, and what we mean by having broken the ones we did in the ways we did.”
No, that wasn’t long enough. You go back and fuck your editor again.
Seriously, fuck them. Just because you choose to use a term — poetry — that they think they get to define and interpret, they can tell you that you have to just conform and write what and how they say? What the fuck is an editor other than a failed writer? He tried to go where you’re going, and he ran out of gas along the way. You fucking write. If that shit-gargler has a problem with it, I’ll be glad to continue the conversation with them. The single most-memorized American poem starts with, “There once was a man from Nantucket,” so fuck it. Write your truth, brother. I got your back.
Wait… I got your back until you let this fucking Cheeto tell you how to sing your song. Then, my frustration will be with you for being a rollover sellout. Those who aren’t great cooks and want a cake, they follow a recipe. You’re a phenomenal fucking poet and you want a poem. You don’t need a recipe, and your audience, the people who feel your truth in your words? They’re out there, they will eat your cake, and they will love you all the more because they love your cake. There’s a place for fruitcake, for banana cream cake, for pound cake, for angel food cake, and — if you’re like me — for fucking pie, and people who like yours will eat it, will relish it, will need it and breathe it and love it because it’s what they wish they could’ve said. The rest can go straight to Hell (and not in the good way).
In some ways, despite how much I hated the classroom, I’d like to go back to teaching, or maybe just workshops. I can hear my self-introduction: “Hey, guys, I’m Jason. Not Mr. Thigpen. If you think for a moment that I deserve a Mister from you, go sit in the fucking corner until you grow a pair and develop a sense of your own worth. I’m not better than you, I’m not above you. I’m just here to pass on a little confidence, a little information, and maybe — if I’m that good — a little inspiration. Now, somebody shout out a monkeys-fucking-octopi-scale weird-ass idea, and let’s get to writing.”
