Reading/Writing
Our reading influences our writing. To be a better writer, read better writing.
When an author, no matter how known and famous, expresses a liking for another author, he’ll often pattern his material according to what he likes in that of the other.
Recently, I came across this when I learned that Rudyard Kipling was a favorite of Robert Service. I looked for similarity, and I found it.
Service’s “The Shooting of Dangerous Dan McGrew” pretty well parallels Kipling’s “Fisher’s Boardinghouse.” Both write of violent men in adventurous, dangerous settings. In “Fisher’s Boardinghouse, “Swede, bare of arm” is knifed over the lady “Ann of Austria.” At Swede’s death, Ann takes the “silver crucifix” from about his neck. In “The Shooting of Dangerous Dan McGrew,” the prospector and Dangerous Dan kill each other over the lady named “Lou.” She filches the poke of gold dust off the dead prospector.
The basic themes of these poems are much alike. They describe these “ladies of easy virtue” salvaging what they can from the bodies of these men. These men who were once a part of the ladies’ lives.
Your typical “triangle”--men, with base instincts, moving toward each other for the woman at the apex--then the violence and death that ensues when they converge.
Read Kipling’s earlier “Fisher’s Boardinghouse” and Service’s “The Shooting of Dangerous Dan McGrew.” You’ll agree that Kipling influenced Service.
Sir Walter Scott, the Scottish novelist and poet, wrote of high adventure, chivalry, and honor. He made war seem admirable and heroic. His writing is said to have influenced the young bloods of the Old South to welcome the war that ensued between the states. Anything encouraging that hurtful clash, including Scott’s wrinting, is regrettable.
Having read about the influence Scott’s romantic adventure had, I was influenced to write “Blue and Gray Rewrite.” In it I suggest alternatives to the Civil War with this I-wish-it-might’ve-been bit of fantasy.
The following is an excerpt from my poem “Blue and Gray Rewrite.”
It caused bitterness, area for area,
Race for race, and fostered corrosive hate,
But it’s innate immorality and economic fallacy,
Without war, would’ve caused it to abate.
Now, I’ve read our nation’s history,
Studied the Civil War in southern schools,
And, I figure, the leaders who allowed it
Were a damn bunch of fools.
To write my poetry, I’ve often turned to the better poetry of others. The masterful way a Vachel Lindsay does his thing suggests ways for me to do mine. After reading his “The Congo (A Study of the Negro Race)” I was able to write “Observations and Comments Racial.”
These lines in Lindsay’s poem suggested some of the lines in mine:
Then I heard the boom of his blood-lust song
And a thigh-bone beating on a tin-pan gong,
And “Blood!” screamed the skull-faced, lean witch-doctors;
“Whirl ye the deadly voo-doo rattle,
Happy the uplands,
Steal all the cattle,...
Do you notice any similarity to the following excerpt from my lesser poem “Observations and Comments Racial:” and Vachel Lindsay’s greater one?
Clubs bang the beat
on hollow tree trunks--
Gourds of fermented brew
inebriates the drunks.
Flickering fires heat bloody meat chunks
strung on rattan vines--
Starving children cower to the rear of greedy adults
at the head of the lines.
There’s the grimacing witch doctor
shaking his voodoo rattle--
Castaneting poisoned seeds in horns
hacked off the heads of stolen cattle.
The tribe’s splayed toes--
their thorn scarred feet--
Scuff and shuffle the jungle humus
in the humid heat.
Sweat turns dust to mud
on pumping thighs--
Ears throb to guttural grunts
and shrieking cries.
They twist and cavort by moon beam
throughout the night--
Then, slink to their huts and to sleep
when day breaks bright.
They’ve vented their emotions
and their ebullience, too.
Not knowing, themselves,
what they went through.
Now, in considering primitives,
it seems to hold true--
That traits found in the dark tribes
are in the light ones, too....
As I said, to be a better writer, read better writing.
