When
I was doing a graduate degree in speech communication, I had a professor who
said, “It is not that you must be so clear that you can be understood. You must
be so clear you cannot be
misunderstood.”
On
5-28-14 I posted a poem in CHRIST IN WINTER: Reflections on Faith from a Place
of Winter for the Years of Winter. http://christinwinter.blogspot.com/
One
commenter said in response to it: “It is good that she is gone. Your disdain
for her is palpable.”
So
that you don’t have to look it up to see why he said that, here is the poem:
You
don’t need to tell me that I should be happy
for
her, I am,
the
little ingrate, going off
to
college, to live her own
life,
without me, the one
who
has let her hug me anytime,
as
much as she wanted, the one
who
trusts her for information
about
the current age, in which I live,
but
which does not live in me,
I,
who have let her fix my computer
whenever
it has descended
into
digital hell, in HD, yet,
I
who have never dropped
a
telephone into the toilet,
for
it is only her generation
that
drops phones into the toilet
from
the hip pockets of their jeans,
I
who screamed only once, maybe twice,
but
not really all that loudly,
even
though people in Norway
complained,
as she practiced
driving
in my new car,
so
stop telling me, dammit,
that
I should be happy
for
her.
I
am.
One
immediate response is: The reader totally
misunderstood. The poem is clearly not about disdain but love, someone who
is happy for the girl that she gets to live her life, but sad that she will no
longer be in his, at least not in their former ways.
Another
response is: The writer clearly failed in his attempt, because he was not so
clear that he could not be misunderstood.
Neither
response is quite right, because they treat the poem as information, not
communication.
My
professor’s dictum is useful if giving information. You need to state the
“when, where, why, who, and sometimes how” with total accuracy. Even then, of
course, some folks won’t read/hear it correctly, but at least the
writer/speaker is not at fault.
But
writing in the poetry, fiction, spiritual, and dramatic veins are not primarily
information. They are relational. There is a great difference between
information and communication, the participation in community that
non-information types of writing, such as poetry, invoke.
That
is why it is important for writers to put a character into the story who is a
stand-in for the reader, someone who represents the reader’s interests. Books I
give up on are those where no character is voicing my concerns, so that I can
be in the community of the book.
John
Robert McFarland
In
case you missed it, a Tweet Repeat: Not all compulsions are bad. There is a
great difference between a compulsion to help and a compulsion to hurt.
I
tweet as yooper1721.
My novel, VETS, will be published by Black Opal Books in
late 2014 or early 2015.
MY
OTHER BOOKS:
NOW THAT I HAVE CANCER I AM
WHOLE: Reflections on Life and Healing for Cancer Patients and Those Who Love
Them
[AndrewsMcMeel & HarperAudio, with Czech and Japanese translations] Paul K.
Hamilton, MD, the co-founder of CanSurmount, called it “The best book for
cancer patients, by a cancer patient, ever.”
AN ORDINARY MAN [HarperPaperbacks] Randall
MacLane just wanted to be an ordinary man. But sent with a message for Custer,
he became a drifting lawman with a knack for killing, and a deep well of
loneliness. Then a twist of fate brought him full circle…
THE STRANGE CALLING: Stories of
Ministry
[Smyth&Helwys] I didn’t want to be a preacher, but I made a deal with God
to save my sister’s life. Was that really a “call,” though? I said, “I’ll try t
for 50 years, and if I still don’t know, I’ll do something else.” These are
stories of what happened in those years of questioning the call.
WHEN FATHER RODE THE MAIL and
Other Stories of Christmas
[lulu.com] ISBN 978-1-300-38566-0
If
you like baseball poetry, take a look at “Frosty & the Babe” http://www.baseball-almanac.com/poetry/frosty_and_the_babe.shtml
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