Ty

Journalism is a genre that does not receive the acclaim it deserves in writing circles. When I spoke to a journalist acquaintance recently, he told me that a prominent university in California did not teach journalism because it thought that the genre was “a craft” rather than an intellectual pursuit. This view could not be farther from the truth. Anyone who has read and enjoyed an article in a newspaper, magazine, or other journalistic venue knows that a truly talented journalist can take any subject, from global warming to government corruption, and turn it into an enthralling and informative piece of writing. It is a medium that requires writing of a vital and challenging nature, and it functions as a central component of our society’s access to knowledge and freedom of speech.

Although the definition of journalism often seems, as a cultural construct, fluid and changing, there are certain concrete claims that we can make about its nature. These mostly involve what journalism is not; at an elementary level, it is not fiction. Recently this distinction has become somewhat harder to discern. Shows like Jon Stewart’s The Daily Show and Stephen Colbert’s The Colbert Report, as well as pseudo-news websites like The Onion, challenge conventional notions of journalistic reporting as “true” or “false.” When Stewart’s program runs a segment that describes a voting demographic as “people whose heads get stuck in jars when they eat pickles,” his audience is not expected to accept this information as true, but the underlying point is taken: American elections are decided by a number of people whose intelligence is suspect. Because their intention is to impart information in an only partially truthful manner, we can classify sources like Stewart’s as social commentators rather than journalists.

We find that Stewart is entertaining in his ability to glean laughs and provide biting social commentary by filtering and reinterpreting ordinarily dry and dismal facts. However, the best journalistic writers are able to use accurate information to convey a different, and sometimes deeper sort of knowledge to their readers than one might find in the ironic or sarcastic approach exhibited by such commentators; these journalists do this while simultaneously drawing their reader into an article. This is not to say that the societal truths that Stewart confronts his viewers with are shallow or insignificant. He aims to present a condensed form of knowledge to his audience in order to identify the ironies and contradictions existing in our society’s most prevalent practices. We can differentiate both his techniques and his aims from those of journalism, which deploys reality in all its subtlety and detail to illustrate the significance of actual events and concepts. Authors Bill Kovach and Tom Rosenstiel in their book The Elements of Journalism explain that “Journalism is storytelling with a purpose. That purpose is to provide people with information they need to understand the world.” Whereas social commentary consists of a limited number of facts that are ripe with material for a commentator to base opinion and satire on, journalism must encompass a wider, deeper, and more textured array of information while working to put this information into an appealing, interesting format. This makes the task of journalistic writing both daunting and enticing to those who like to write.

In their text, Kovach and Rosenstiel note that “People have an intrinsic need — an instinct — to know what is occurring beyond their direct experience.” Our thirst for information is not easily satisfied in the age of mixed media. High quality journalistic writing should prove to its audience that its topic is something to be concerned with. Especially when an article is part of a daily publication, it has to accomplish this task quickly, something that can be characterized as “reeling the audience in.” In a New York Times article titled “On Parched Farms, Using Intuition to Find Water,” journalist Jesse McKinley performs this feat while tackling the somewhat dry issue of the drought in California (no pun intended).

WATERFORD, Calif. — Phil Stine is not crazy, or possessed, or even that special, he says. He has no idea how he does what he does. From most accounts, he does it very well.
“Phil finds the water,” said Frank Assali, an almond farmer and convert. “No doubt about it.”
Mr. Stine, you see, is a “water witch,” one of a small band of believers for whom the ancient art of dowsing is alive and well.
Emphasis, of course, on well. Using nothing more than a Y-shaped willow stick, Mr. Stine has as his primary function determining where farmers should drill to slake their crops’ thirst, adding an element of the mystical to a business where the day-to-day can often be painfully plain.

Our attention is captured from the first line. In this particular article, the key to drawing the audience in is the reporter’s chosen diction, as well as the use of selective quotes and paraphrasing to heighten the element of characterization. We don’t expect to be led into a discussion of a drought by way of a “water witch,” but the writer does just that, and succeeds at fastening our interest. Through the individual Phil Stine, we are introduced to an unknown culture, one that even has its own language; this introduction is made in approximately eight sentences. The writer’s quick clarification of terms such as “dowsing” and his smooth laying out of context in the fourth paragraph ushers the audience from potential confusion to understanding in an incredibly short space.

Furthermore, hard facts are provided in the next few paragraphs to persuade us that this is not a marginal, irrelevant subject; the phenomenon of “water witch[es]” directly reflects the situation in drought-ridden California. “The state estimates nearly $260 million in crop damages through August…Statewide, farmers have left nearly 80,000 acres fallow rather than struggle — and pay handsomely — to keep them irrigated.” Using the story of a quirky or somehow distinct individual to lead into potentially dull but newsworthy factual evidence is a hallmark of narrative journalism.

A problem that articles like this one can run into is a loss of momentum after starting out strong. Although we wouldn’t want an article without any substance or evidence, we also want our interest to be piqued throughout a piece. If a writer begins with a fascinating depiction of an individual like Phil Stine, but then descends into numerical data without looking back, we’re sure to be disappointed. This is where controversy comes in. Any story worth writing about will be accompanied by several viewpoints, and these can be used to keep an article afloat. As my journalist acquaintance defined them, these are know as “tension points…the best pieces exhibit tension, sometimes excruciating tension…or the threat of danger and/or disaster right around the corner.” In this drought article, the conflict between the “water witch” tradition and scientific beliefs functions as a tension point. The passage here, which comes in the middle of the article, is skillfully rendered in that it not only presents an opposing viewpoint, but it posits a reason that water witches might be used instead of modern technology:

Thomas Harter, a hydrologist at the University of California, Davis, who runs workshops with farmers looking to drill wells, said there was no scientific evidence that dowsers had special talent at finding water. They are, however, usually much cheaper than the various scientific tools, like electromagnetic imaging or seismic studies, that can help find aquifers.

When an article uses controversy, it not only continues to hold the audience’s attention, it also takes a step towards larger relevance by including themes that can be seen as widely applicable. The conflict between tradition and science is one that most people recognize as manifesting itself widely. With its inclusion, a piece on the drought in California is also a piece on a general human predicament. Journalists should beware of reaching for universal themes with every article, however. If there is a fire in a building that kills two people, it does not necessarily reflect the entire human condition. Writers have to be careful not to exaggerate a story’s importance. The choicest stories will invariably possess greater significance than others, but a good journalist aims for consistently strong, interesting writing, no matter the topic. I would like to point out that one of the skills required of a journalist is the ability to discern whether or not a story is worth telling. There is, after all, some information that is not fit to be shared; it may be too specialized, trivial, or unfounded to merit acknowledgment.

But to return to our source: the best thing about the McKinley article is its angle on an issue. By looking at an odd cultural phenomenon that is associated with the California drought, instead of diving directly into the drought itself, the article escapes data spewing. It consistently intersperses fact with character description and opinions on a controversy; in the paragraphs following the introduction of the viewpoint of the scientific community, other sources attest to the success of water witches, while the writer goes into deeper detail about Mr. Stine. Therefore the article maintains the momentum that it built up in its introduction.

William Finnegan’s New Yorker article “The Last Tour” is a different model of journalistic storytelling than McKinley’s. The New Yorker is a monthly publication, and Finnegan’s story, at seven pages in length and covering a large span of time, has obviously been researched with care. Whereas an analysis of McKinley’s article stresses the writer’s ability to overcome the potential triviality or dullness of an issue by making wise stylistic choices, Finnegan’s article presents an achievement in its manipulation and presentation of emotion and detail within the frame of a topic that could swallow many a story: the war in Iraq.

Another piece of advice from The Elements of Journalism: “‘Good stories lead you to the truth; they don’t tell you the truth.’” Finnegan’s writing embodies this mantra. He is dealing with subject matter of great weight; not only is his primary focus an Iraq war veteran, Travis Twiggs, but this particular veteran suffers from Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (P.T.S.D.) and commits suicide before the article is over. Instead of forcing these facts on the reader and searching them for political or war-related truths, Finnegan allows the actual people whose lives have been altered by Twiggs’ actions to come to life, vividly, through his reporting. Describing Travis’ wife, Kellee, Finnegan writes:

Her right foot and ankle carry a huge tattoo, “Travis,” in Gothic script. She noticed me studying it. “He had my name all over him,” she said. “On the top of his left foot. On dog tags off his shoulder…” On his right forearm, she said, Travis had “Gladiator”; on his left, “Spartan.” “My husband was my everything,” she said. “He was my hero.”

This passage is remarkable for several reasons. First of all, the author manages to capture elements of two central characters in his piece: Travis and Kellee Twiggs. We get the sense that Travis and Kellee, through the symbolic means of their tattoos, were equally devoted to one another. Furthermore, Kellee’s description of Travis’ tattoos that are army-like in nature — Gladiator and Spartan — develop the impression that Travis was devoted to his career in the Army as well as to his wife. Therefore the writer has subtly and skillfully conveyed a wealth of significant information through a short description of several tattoos that is given almost in entirety by Kellee Twiggs.

The subtlety and skill of this delivery cannot be emphasized enough. When we weave dialogue into writing, we often have a tendency to over-write, to embellish someone’s words with verbs and depictions of body language or setting details. Finnegan resists this urge completely, and the starkness of his presence allows the dialogue here to speak for itself; as we’ve seen, it has a lot to say without the author attempting to explicate it for us at all. He is unflinching in his use of the verb phrase “she said”; it is used three times in this passage. The repetition works perfectly in this case, offsetting the depth and poignancy of Kellee’s emotions, especially in the devastating last two lines.

Despite the subtlety characteristic of this article, which contains numerous examples of dialogue, imagery, and fact shared in as quiet a manner and with as powerful an effect as the above passage, Finnegan has a purpose beyond masterful storytelling. His use of facts gathered from neutral sources frame Travis Twiggs’ tragic experience as part of a larger phenomenon, one that affects numerous veterans of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Finnegan states that P.T.S.D. “is best understood…as a psychic wound, one that can be crippling, even fatal, in its myriad complications”, then writes “A recent RAND Corporation study estimated that three hundred thousand veterans of America’s post-9/11 wars—nearly twenty percent of those who have served—are suffering from P.T.S.D. or major depression”. We have already learned of the results of P.T.S.D. in the case of Travis Twiggs, so the knowledge that there are potentially hundreds of thousands suffering from the same condition is staggering in its implications.

Furthermore, Finnegan’s depiction of the military’s treatment of Travis Twiggs indicates a system that is broken amid a culture that has long viewed mental illness as a sign of weakness. Twiggs was deployed five times, once to Afghanistan and four times to Iraq; his later deployments occurred even as he was suffering from P.T.S.D. Once his P.T.S.D. was identified, Twiggs was repeatedly overmedicated. Finnegan does not directly state that the military and more generally the government that facilitated the post-9/11 wars are to blame for Twiggs’ suicide. He does provide enough evidence and commentary from those he interviews for the article to lead his audience to this conclusion. Thus, Finnegan retains objectivity in his writing but all the same crafts a powerful piece with the purpose of illustrating the urgency of an issue and pointing out the necessity for a solution.

Having analyzed components of two pieces of high quality journalism, I want to once again emphasize the viability of journalism as a form of skilled writing. The task of the journalist is not so different from that of the novelist or poet. As my
acquaintance told me, journalists try to “get inside a phenomenon that most readers will never experience,” a statement that could be applied to the objective of writers in many genres. But because journalists deal with truth, and aim to present this truth thoroughly and with integrity, their ability to write with skill and appeal takes on a unique style. It is a style that deserves to be studied and appreciated so that “storytelling with a purpose” can continue to provide us with a better knowledge of our world.

Comment [5]

A few weeks ago, I experienced a moment of utter panic. There I was on Sunday morning, turning the pages of the New York Times Book Review at leisure, when all of the sudden these words popped out at me from the page: “The point may soon come when there are more people who want to write books than there are people who want to read them.”

My first thought: Well…what does that mean? Are there too many writers? Wait a second. Does this mean I have to stop writing?!

NO!!! No, says I! It cannot be!

My second thought: Wow, this is so true. I mean, it’s obvious beyond belief. Does anyone not want to be a writer? If there’s a surplus of anything right now, it’s writers. And why do I want to pursue a writing career? Am I crazy? Yes, I am crazy. Completely, totally, bars-on-windows crazy.

After a few desperate croaks of “Save me,” which merited odd looks from my mom, I decided to see what else the author of this article had to say. After all, the person who wrote this was, well, a writer. They wouldn’t proclaim the dreams of so many aspiring writers obsolete or worthless without good reason.

They went on to state: “At least, that is what the evidence suggests. Booksellers, hobbled by the economic crisis, are struggling to lure readers. Almost all of the New York publishing houses are laying off editors and pinching pennies. Small bookstores are closing. Big chains are laying people off or exploring bankruptcy.”

Well, this made me reconsider my previous thoughts. I don’t find it at all reassuring that booksellers and publishers are struggling. I’d much rather hear that book sales are at an all-time high, that the whole population needs glasses from reading too much, and that libraries have hired bouncers to control clamoring hordes at their doors. But the woes of booksellers, publishing houses, and the printed word in general do not necessarily have to be the woes of writers. It just depends on what writers are looking for. Which brings me to the question: what do writers want?

Like any other aspiring writer, I’d absolutely love to publish something. Most people who write really want people to appreciate whatever it is they’ve written. We have an innate need and want to share what we create. Yet sharing does not entail publishing. Publishing is a seal of approval. It is the official sign that you are a Writer, with all sorts of words and ideas at your disposal. In itself, though, sharing does not require a publisher, bookseller, or anything in between. ImpishIdea is partially built around this concept – the idea that there are readers available at any moment to not only read your writing but to provide thoughts and suggestions for improvement.

I am not suggesting that this sort of interaction between writers and readers should replace the reading of books. Any amateur writer who has read their fair share of books will cheerfully concede that the quality of a published book is, on average, a thousand times better than the writing you find on the internet (I am referring to work posted on the internet that is not accepted or approved by an editor or publisher). Editors, publishers and, to a more minor extent, booksellers perform a service by filtering through the “chaff” of writing to find the “wheat.” A reader with even the slightest powers of discernment and the desire to read something of good quality – that is, someone who doesn’t walk out of a bookstore having purchased a Stephanie Meyer novel – will benefit greatly from the hard work and careful selection of an editor, publisher, and bookseller.

However, for those of us who are amateur writers and haven’t reached the point of publishing (if we ever will), there’s no need to despair or give up writing or wonder if we’ll ever be able to share our work. There are so many ways for us to share our writing, to discuss writing itself, and to improve how we write. We might yearn for greater recognition of our efforts, and we might wish that we could parlay our love of writing into some sort of reasonable career, but we are grateful for and, to a degree, satisfied with the acknowledgment and feedback from our small audience of fellow writers and readers.

The key point that the article I mentioned above misses is that most people don’t write for the sole purpose of publishing. When I think about why I write, publishing is far, far down on my list. It follows a lengthy recitation of other, and better, reasons – reasons that I suspect I have in common with other writers. Who doesn’t know the sublime happiness that can be found in writing, and the deep sense of calm and mental well-being it brings; or, conversely, the excitement and electricity of reaching an epiphany in words? Those who write know the need to express thoughts and opinions, to tell a story, to work through and understand personal experiences, to communicate more clearly and profoundly, all through writing. When I write, I am driven by my huge admiration for the authors whose books I love to read over and over again. I know that the same is true for many, many other writers, amateur or otherwise. We write not because we want to publish. We don’t even write just because we want to. No, we write for an even simpler reason. We write because writing is what we love.

The article mentioned:
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/28/books/28selfpub.html?scp=1&sq=writers&st=cse

Comment [13]

These are hard times, people. Really, really hard times. My dad lost his job, my mom’s career is on the brink, and both of my parents have resorted to stealing tricycles from toddlers and selling them on eBay for extra income. Ok, the last one isn’t true, but you get the idea.

Now what can I, an infamously lazy teenager, do to help my family in these days of doom? I’ve been pondering this for a while, and I think I’ve hit upon a brilliant solution. This is how it goes: I will write an incredibly crappy romance novel featuring mythical creatures that hitherto have been considered undesirable and/or weird as hell, but with my help will soon be considered the height of schmexiness. I will fill aforementioned novel chock full of misplaced adjectives, the ideological equivalents of passing gas, and lots of glitter. And I will proceed to sell millions of copies of my heinous novel to unsuspecting (or suspecting) American teenagers under the pseudonym Killjoy Lawrence. In other words, I will follow in the admirable footsteps of Stephanie Meyer.

I think a few more details will be illuminating as to how I will carry out this monumental task. Character #1, whom I shall lyrically dub Faint Echo, will be known solely by the fact that a) she narrates the story, and b) in personality, she closely resembles a white crayon – by which I mean to say, I could color her over every scene and still the only thing visible about her would be her fanatical infatuation with an unlikely love interest. If anyone views this character depiction as wrongly one-dimensional, I’ll have you know that Faint reads Emily Dickinson poems and fancies herself a reclusive genius. At some point in the plot she will throw her Dickinson books and her dreams of genius out the window in order to be with her fanatical infatuation.

Which brings me to Character #2, also known as Mr. Studly, an individual who lives to be unbearably good-looking and plot-servingly mysterious. In case you still feel a little unclear as to his role in the book, this should help you out: he also happens to be staggeringly sexy, magnificently muscular, seductively shiny, glitteringly gorgeous, Stonehenge-ingly statuesque, bodaciously beautiful, preposterously perfect, and filamentously, fortuitously, fragrantly frothy. Yes, frothy. He will probably act like a total douchebag towards Faint Echo throughout the book, but we couldn’t care less because we keep forgetting she exists in the first place.

The other characters in the book don’t really matter. You and I both know that the crowning achievement of this literary endeavor will amount to getting #1 and #2 into one another’s arms and, um, bodily cavities (nevermind the fact that #2’s body cavities are the only ones you give a damn about). If there are other characters at all they will merely serve to distract the lovers from their creepy, obsessive bliss long enough to extend the book to three hundred pages. Furthermore, they’ll give me a chance to populate my semi-mystical world with inexplicably warped versions of fantastical beings. You want werewolves? I give you…a troupe of cheerleaders that morph into flying poodles on the summer solstice!

I was also going to discuss the not-so-subtle ideological bent of my creation, but the concepts are so insidious and downright stupid that I thought I’d spare myself the embarrassment for now and just let you pick them apart later. Unless someone thinks I can get away with a digression on Marxist conceptions of consumer culture-–and maybe a short one on literature and the postmodern consciousness? Maybe? Ok, I’m thinking that’s a no.

I happen to have one major predicament with this project, other than the whole selling-my-soul-to-the-devil conundrum. I have no idea what sort of mythical creature Ed—er, make that Mr. Studly–-should be. For copyright reasons, vampires are obviously off of the list. Werewolves too. Dragons are a bit too scaly to be the schmexiest of the schmexy. Gnomes always seem to be old men in pointy hats—and while this wouldn’t stop the brave, stereotype-busting Ms. Meyer from conceiving of them as aging sex gods with beards that turn to fireballs in the event of a snowstorm, some of us can’t get away with such epic revisions of mythical identities.

In keeping with stereotypes, dwarves apparently have really bad manners (not to mention breath), and therefore would not at all fit the character of abusive, pathologically insane, but oh-so-dazzlingly-delectable boyfriend-to-be. Anything with elves will brand me as unoriginal even before people decide to read my decidedly unoriginal book. If I choose to create a leading male character that doubles as a fairy I will risk challenging traditional gender roles far too blatantly for the parameters my disgustingly traditional novel. I can’t be subversive unless, you know, I’m being subversive in an idiotic and meaningless way. And, to top off the list of available mythical creatures, wizards are so passé!

What I need from you, dear reader, are suggestions. What sort of special should Mr. Studly be? Dig deep. But not too deep. If I’m going to save my family from total financial crash-and-burn before the end of the year, I need to be armed with some pretty shallow material.

Comment [48]

Have you ever been so busy that you think your world is most certainly going to implode? The fiery balls of flame are coming, the hail that is dropping from the sky will pop open to reveal deadly pink parasites, and the man that lives on the moon is sending an Earth-sized atomic bomb our way. In other words, there is no longer such a thing as free time. I know anyone that has ever been a high school student, or a student of any kind for that matter, understands what I’m talking about. Essays, exams, studying for exams, projects, extracurricular projects, regular homework, chores…the list goes on. At some point you decide that there is no way in hell that you are ever going to have the time, energy, or inclination to write again.

Now, with the advice in this article, I am not suggesting that your schoolwork is unimportant and should be shunted aside for writing (on that note, I really should be writing an English essay right now…). But there are ways to squeeze your writing into slivers of time, slivers so tiny and negligible that you won’t feel compelled to crack rocks against your head as punishment for that incomplete research paper. By parceling out your creative impulses with these time-saving measures, you’ll keep your writing skills up to scratch –-and even better, you’ll shed some of the many layers of stress you’ve accumulated through creative release. And no, this is not an advertisement in disguise for quick-and-easy microwave meals.

Here’s a list of the simplest ways to fit your writing into bite-sized pieces. These techniques can also be useful for writing practice when you find yourself lacking in that mythical miracle substance, inspiration—or if you just have the luxury of being really bored, in which case I wouldn’t mind trading places with you for a while. Some of these have been previously discussed on II, and probably with much more wisdom than I have to offer, but I thought I’d do you a favor—or a disservice, depending on your outlook—by lumping them all together into a self-help format. No need to pay me.

1. Revision. Don’t look at this word and run from the room screaming. Revision often has a bad reputation among those who haven’t tried it out. But it is your best friend, even if you don’t know it yet. I was converted to the cult of revisionists after the terribly ugly state of some of my old poetry and prose came to my attention; at first glance, much of my writing seemed beyond repair. Yet buried beneath a thick spread of clichés, awkward grammatical constructions, and generally disgusting sentiment, some stuff wasn’t that bad. In fact, I really liked some of the ideas I had stuck into my clunky old stanzas and paragraphs. This is where revision comes in. By focusing intensely on one poem or paragraph at a time for a short while—10 minutes or so—I was able to pull out all the material I liked, mash it together, and turn it into a decent piece of writing. You can’t imagine how satisfying it is to take old ideas—ideas that might merit the adjective “inspired”—and make them better, clearer, elegant, perhaps even eloquent. To put it simply, make them shine! This process demands no particular chunk of time; you can spend as little as sixty seconds or as much as an hour revising. Whether you change one word in a sentence or use a few key ideas from an old work to write an entire story, you’ll be amazed at the beauty of this technique. Try it. RIGHT NOW.

2. Wordplay. This really is just wordplay. Take a word—preferably a long one, maybe something you’ve taken from a dictionary or just something that sounds fun to your ear—and play with it on a page. Make variations on it; tell a story; make up a conversation with this one beautiful word. This will feel slightly ridiculous, but it’ll loosen up your writing “arm” and perhaps even your brain. Better yet, take the sound of a word in your brain, or the sound of several words, and mix them up to make a new word—and then do something with that word. Here’s a poem of mine, by no means worthy of applause but still a poem, which was written as a wordplay exercise:

Prithee! Amok we run
Sky tasting clouds,
Of snow before it falls
I tell you, numerous times,
Frosted and frettled like
Ink swells and parlay paper
Quantum leap! Quantum—
Chime, my friends, we chorus-sify,
If we please, so mote it be.

As I mentioned, not much of a poem, and certainly nonsensical. But I thoroughly enjoyed writing it, I got to make up at least two words that have never been seen before, and I at least knew that I had written something that day, even something ridiculous.

3. Write a poem. Ok, so this is kind of general advice, and many of you have probably done this already. But I know there are plenty of people who might not write poetry at all. Perhaps you don’t like poetry, or you don’t think you’re cut out for it. Well, trust me, anyone can write a poem (Yes, anyone. But, as is clear from the poem I’ve included here, writing a poem does not at all ensure that it will be good). And if you don’t like poetry, that’s ok too. I used to think poetry wasn’t much to look at. Yet you’d be surprised by the freedom that writing poetry brings you. There are no constraints of storyline, context, even simple coherency. Plenty of poems do have a storyline, a context, and coherency. But these things are not required. Sure, prose doesn’t require these either, but I’ve found that when I write prose, I feel obligated to explain things, even if I’m not writing the prose for anyone but myself. And from what I’ve heard from others, this is true for a lot of people. So try a poem. Poems can be really short; they can be about nothing, or anything; they can be pretty, ugly, strange, deluded, plain crazy, or hilarious. You don’t have to be inspired or genius-like or beautiful to write a poem. Pick some random object from your room or an idea from a book you’re reading or a movie you’re watching and go crazy with it in a poem.

4. Go truly crazy. Take your writing to the outermost limits of reason and beyond, no matter what kind of piece you’re working on. Permit yourself to write anything at all—you can always erase it or delete it or burn it in a ritual bonfire. Once you’ve gone fully insane and spat out all the words in your head and channeled all the stressed-as-hell emotions in your mind into a poem or prose piece or something betwixt and between, you’ll feel pretty damn good. So good that the loathsome piles of homework lying around your room will miraculously take on the appearance of a hot fudge sundae, that upcoming AP exam will appear as light and bright as the morning star, and your sinuses will be dancing with clarity. I swear on my life, I am not peddling some miracle drug here. Just you, your keyboard and/or pen, and some crazy.

Ok, now I really have to go write that English essay

Comment [23]

In the great and ongoing anthropological exploration known as Project Rabid Twilight Teenage Girl Fans (Are They Missing Neurons, or Merely Faint From Imagined Blood Loss?), I’ve come to notice a great deficit of information. There has been a sad lack of love poems for determined anti-Twilighters to analyze, terrorize, desecrate, and discover the truth of the universe within. Or at least, there has been a lack of such poems on this site. I can’t vouch for Twilight fan sites. In fact, I imagine there are a great number of love poems on Twilight fan sites. A creepily great number. A horrible, mind-scarring, deeply traumatic deluge of Edward love poems, slowly but surely making their way to your house to haunt you in the night.

I digress. I happen to have a 15-year-old sister who is a fan of Twilight, and, inevitably, so are her friends. I say inevitably because Twilight is one of those annoying phenomenons that spreads like a virus. Apparently it’s more enjoyable to suffer from Twilight fever in groups. If one teenage girl reads the series, she’ll gasp to her friends about the amazing hotness of a particular ivory-skinned frozen-epithelialwould-be-except-he’s-vegetarian-bloodsucker, and what do you know, soon enough they’ll all be gasping and retching over how hot Mr. Undead is. It’s a self-sustaining myth. Apparently a myth that fosters late-night poetry sessions with undeniably frightening results.

So…here are two Edwardian love poems, obtained with permission from the my sister and her fellow poetess, both of whom would like you all to know that they wrote these in jest. However, I leave that judgment to you. I, for one, am slightly unconvinced that these poems are anything but serious. Hopefully you’ll find them enlightening for research reasons. Or not. I’m not sure if there’s anything here except brain trauma. I’m leaving it to everyone else to try and find something to shed light on the horrifying brain condition affecting the poor subjects of Project Rabid Twilight Teenage Girl Fans (Are They Missing Neurons, or Merely Faint From Imagined Bloodloss?). Please save my sister and her friends. Good luck, and may God, or a non-Twilight-fan, or anyone but Edward, be with you.

Edward

Who hath the voice of velvet
And lips of a queen swan
Diving under the sea to lick an oyster
Whose muscles strain under the pressure
Of clothing to restrain their beauty
And desire too strong to be concealed
And sunlight fought back from the skin of an angel
With the teeth of the devil
You have it all
With nothing but reasons to stop our love
from tearing our hearts out

eDWARd
my life
my soul
my passion
a day
a night
you here
your fright
Edward
I profess
I profound
I love your honey
I love your money
Most of all
Your baring teeth
And your seething attitude
Towards me
You protective
White one
From the depths of hell
I’m here now come give yourself to me

Comment [21]