"Cinderella's Diary," by Ron Koertge
I miss my stepmother. What a thing to say
but it's true. The prince is so boring: four
hours to dress and then the cheering throngs.
Again. The page who holds the door is cute
enough to eat. Where is he once Mr. Charming
kisses my forehead goodnight?
Every morning I gaze out a casement window
at the hunters, dark men with blood on their
boots who joke and mount, their black trousers
straining, rough beards, callused hands, selfish,
abrupt . . .
Oh, dear diary--I am lost in ever after:
those insufferable birds, someone in every
room with a lute, the queen calling me to look
at another painting of her son, this time
holding the transparent slipper I wish
I'd never seen.
From Fever (Red Hen Press, 2007)
but it's true. The prince is so boring: four
hours to dress and then the cheering throngs.
Again. The page who holds the door is cute
enough to eat. Where is he once Mr. Charming
kisses my forehead goodnight?
Every morning I gaze out a casement window
at the hunters, dark men with blood on their
boots who joke and mount, their black trousers
straining, rough beards, callused hands, selfish,
abrupt . . .
Oh, dear diary--I am lost in ever after:
those insufferable birds, someone in every
room with a lute, the queen calling me to look
at another painting of her son, this time
holding the transparent slipper I wish
I'd never seen.
From Fever (Red Hen Press, 2007)
"Cinderella's Diary": A Brief Tutorial
This piece is clearly a "What If" poem.What if Cinderella were unhappy in Ever After? What if King Kong had escaped with the blonde? What would happen to Superman if Lois Lane dabbed a tincture of kryptonite behind her ears? Once a poet (and there are a lot of us who experiment with What If?) gets the idea, he or she is halfway home. I am, anyway.
I like to write fast. Velocity tends to quiet my inner critic. With a draft or two done, then it's time to wonder: Does the poem start quick and smart? Is "lute" the best choice for the thing that's in every room? Do the details in stanza two show Cinderella as profoundly disappointed or merely horny? Does the joke about the transparent slipper being seen work or is there a better spin on it?
Finally, though, I just give up. Poems are almost never finished, just abandoned with twenty dollars, a map, and all the good will I have left.
I like to write fast. Velocity tends to quiet my inner critic. With a draft or two done, then it's time to wonder: Does the poem start quick and smart? Is "lute" the best choice for the thing that's in every room? Do the details in stanza two show Cinderella as profoundly disappointed or merely horny? Does the joke about the transparent slipper being seen work or is there a better spin on it?
Finally, though, I just give up. Poems are almost never finished, just abandoned with twenty dollars, a map, and all the good will I have left.
On Being Edgy--Ron Koertge
I take it as a compliment when somebody (usually a reviewer) calls me an edgy writer.
But I’m always a little surprised because edgy isn’t something I’m trying to be. “Add a little edge” sounds like something from The Joy of Cooking or in this case The Joy of Cooking Up a Best Seller. It’s not bad advice and I may have told students of mine (I teach in an MFA program for kids’ writers) to do it. But it’s not advice I give myself.
I’m pretty sure some of my reputed edge comes from the four-letter words in a handful of my novels. Colleen in Stoner and Spaz has such a potty mouth. But so do I. Hers can be excused in a sense because she runs with a rough crowd. What’s my excuse? None, your Honor. I can only throw myself on the mercy of the court. Since it’s natural for me to swear, I sometimes find characters who naturally swear, too.
I’ve had parents excoriate me for setting up characters like Colleen as role models. But who would want to be like her – she hates her mother, thinks school is stupid, is addled by marijuana and desecrated by her boyfriend, an entry-level drug dealer. It was Samuel Johnson (I think) who wanted Fielding’s characters to be either Good or Bad so readers would know whom to loathe and whom to copy.
But human beings aren’t just Bad or Good. They’re complicated and many-faceted. For all her faults, Colleen is also witty and compassionate. Her realistic take on Ben’s less-than-perfect body is just the tonic he needs. She doesn’t mean to do good, it’s a by-product of her personality structure which is part dog house, part castle.
And what a fuss about The Arizona Kid. A gay adult! Gasp. Who is sweeter-natured than Wes, the gay uncle whom Billy (the sixteen-year old narrator) stays with for one transformative summer. Transformative? So does he turn queer, too?
Hardly. Since it doesn’t work that way. Billy’s tendencies are decidedly heterosexual, and the book is partly about that (a rite of passage in a horse stall) and partly about friendship and tolerance. The book is well-written, full of interesting details about life on the backstretch of a race track, and pretty funny. Yet librarians still come up to me at ALA or NTCE and say how they love the book but can’t have it in their libraries.
Finally there’s Marguax With an X. It probably qualifies as edgy because one of its themes is the fallout from sexual abuse. But some books about abuse are so over the top or tendentious that they’re less edgy than ponderous and ultimately dull. The edge for me in this novel is Margaux’s amazing vocabulary, which serves as a kind of meteor shield deflecting the pitiful carnal yapping of teenage boys as well as her parents’ self-serving monologues.
Do all the big words discourage some readers? Absolutely. Does Margaux’s scorn for nearly everything alienate people? For sure. Does all that mean the book sold less well than others? Yep, but I loved writing this book. And what do I need tons of money for, anyway? I’ve got edge.
Ron Koertge 4/29/2008
But I’m always a little surprised because edgy isn’t something I’m trying to be. “Add a little edge” sounds like something from The Joy of Cooking or in this case The Joy of Cooking Up a Best Seller. It’s not bad advice and I may have told students of mine (I teach in an MFA program for kids’ writers) to do it. But it’s not advice I give myself.
I’m pretty sure some of my reputed edge comes from the four-letter words in a handful of my novels. Colleen in Stoner and Spaz has such a potty mouth. But so do I. Hers can be excused in a sense because she runs with a rough crowd. What’s my excuse? None, your Honor. I can only throw myself on the mercy of the court. Since it’s natural for me to swear, I sometimes find characters who naturally swear, too.
I’ve had parents excoriate me for setting up characters like Colleen as role models. But who would want to be like her – she hates her mother, thinks school is stupid, is addled by marijuana and desecrated by her boyfriend, an entry-level drug dealer. It was Samuel Johnson (I think) who wanted Fielding’s characters to be either Good or Bad so readers would know whom to loathe and whom to copy.
But human beings aren’t just Bad or Good. They’re complicated and many-faceted. For all her faults, Colleen is also witty and compassionate. Her realistic take on Ben’s less-than-perfect body is just the tonic he needs. She doesn’t mean to do good, it’s a by-product of her personality structure which is part dog house, part castle.
And what a fuss about The Arizona Kid. A gay adult! Gasp. Who is sweeter-natured than Wes, the gay uncle whom Billy (the sixteen-year old narrator) stays with for one transformative summer. Transformative? So does he turn queer, too?
Hardly. Since it doesn’t work that way. Billy’s tendencies are decidedly heterosexual, and the book is partly about that (a rite of passage in a horse stall) and partly about friendship and tolerance. The book is well-written, full of interesting details about life on the backstretch of a race track, and pretty funny. Yet librarians still come up to me at ALA or NTCE and say how they love the book but can’t have it in their libraries.
Finally there’s Marguax With an X. It probably qualifies as edgy because one of its themes is the fallout from sexual abuse. But some books about abuse are so over the top or tendentious that they’re less edgy than ponderous and ultimately dull. The edge for me in this novel is Margaux’s amazing vocabulary, which serves as a kind of meteor shield deflecting the pitiful carnal yapping of teenage boys as well as her parents’ self-serving monologues.
Do all the big words discourage some readers? Absolutely. Does Margaux’s scorn for nearly everything alienate people? For sure. Does all that mean the book sold less well than others? Yep, but I loved writing this book. And what do I need tons of money for, anyway? I’ve got edge.
Ron Koertge 4/29/2008