Sunday
Stephen King, methinks, likened writing to telepathy, the writer transferring what's in his/her head to the reader's. Think of all the micro fiction you've read. What sticks in your head? Why?
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I'm going to work on figuring that out. These are some things that recently got stuck in my head. Maybe there's an answer among these things.
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Stopping By Woods on a Snowy Evening
Whose woods these are I think I know.
His house is in the village though;
He will not see me stopping here
To watch his woods fill up with snow.My little horse must think it queer
To stop without a farmhouse near
Between the woods and frozen lake
The darkest evening of the year.He gives his harness bells a shake
To ask if there is some mistake.
The only other sound's the sweep
Of easy wind and downy flake.The woods are lovely, dark and deep.
But I have promises to keep,
And miles to go before I sleep,
And miles to go before I sleep.
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From Anne Sexton's "The Witch's Life"
...my heart
is a kitten of butter
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The opening of Sylvia Plath's "Daddy"
You do not do, you do not do
Any more, black shoe
In which I have lived like a foot
For thirty years, poor and white,
Barely daring to breathe or Achoo.
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I guess it's words for me and sounds and images & lyrics I can't quite figure out. It's stuck not because I get it, but because I can't quite grasp something of it: the foreign words of "The Cat in the Hat," the "I'm not unfaithful but I'll stray" of Tegan Sara, the "dark and deep" thing in Frost, the heart as a "kitten of butter" in Sexton, Plath's soothing "oo" sounds set against "barely daring to breathe."
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So write, today or another, a micro that sticks in a reader's head.
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