2000-04-24

lower case

I think, and I haven't checked for sure, but I think I'm at the six-month mark with this diary.

I took a gander at some older paper journals this weekend, and some of it made me wince.

Here's something I don't do anymore: the lower case i. As in: "i am a rilly kewl writer."

What was once a staple of my (shudder) "poetry" and off-the-cuff musings has now been relegated to the Pet Peeve File. Call me a snob, but I think it's affectation at its worst. And I can say this because as recently as 2 years ago, I was a Prime Offender.

I clung to it, the lower case i, as I similarly clung to liberal dashes, a la Dickinson, in place of actual, correct punctuation. The semicolon is your friend, people. It doesn't make you any less po-e-tic.

In graduate school, I took a number of poetry workshops. Fine things, poetry workshops. They allow you to sit and simper sweetly while a table full of other po-ets eviscerate you, in the name of "constructive criticism." They also, in my case, convinced me to stop writing poetry for anyone other than myself.

At any rate, I'd brought in a po-em to share one day, a typically godawful screed about a boy who'd dumped me some three months earlier, and awaited the feedback. One comment I remember clearly, and it was in regards to my use of the lower case i: "Why make yourself so diminutive?"

Well. I was insulted. How dare this person attack my style? My beeyootifull po-em about love, loss, and Los Angeles?

These days, I wish I could track that person down and thank her. She saw a 24-year-old with no apparent knowledge of how to use the SHIFT key, and acted accordingly.

lisamcc at 09:52:48

previous | next