Metaphors: The Good, the Bad, and the Brautigan

Note: This blog post is primarily in response to a poem by mid-western writer Travis Campbell, entitled "Good Metaphors."

I recently entered MacGregor Literary's Annual Bad Poetry Contest, and, much to my delight, I am currently holding second place.  It is strange, the amount of pride I have in this fact.

What is it that is so thrilling about purposefully writing your worst?  There is a certain degree of freedom in it, because compliments and criticisms are now one and the same, and the worst anyone can say about your work is, "I think it's too good."

My stab at infamy begins,

I was walking on the streets
bare and rusty, like someone's
half-drank bottle of underwear

ends with

the sky as vivid
as a t.v. show
about vacation places.

and, in between, includes some of the most bizarre and creative imagery I have ever come up with.  Strangely, there were several times that I had to stop myself while writing this poem, because the imagery I was coming up with was becoming too good and I needed to replace some words with weaker ones.  This is a problem I have never run into before, and certainly a problem I would like to have more often.

It causes me to wonder how much is lost in our constant efforts to impress with our words, and how many truly inspired and inventive uses of the English language are squelched beneath the toes of the leviathan expectations we impose upon ourselves: This has to make sense.  This has to seem legitimate.  To be laughed at is unbearable.

--

I agree with Travis Campbell when he says,

"Good metaphors
don’t need to be explained.
Good metaphors
don’t even need to be
Good metaphors."

Richard Brautigan exemplifies, in a way I'm not sure any other writer can, how good metaphors are sometimes terrible metaphors that don't make the least amount of logical sense.  And yet, those same comparisons can reach so deeply into the heart of how we truly see the world, that somehow, in our maze of synapses, the words connect our irrational selves to the scene in a way that is difficult to understand, with relevancy that is impossible to ignore.

The first time I ever read anything by Brautigan, it was like looking into the eyes of a fish from another planet and seeing myself, upside-down, reflected.

My favorite metaphor of all time can be found in his collection of flash-fiction titled Revenge of the Lawn, in a piece titled "Pacific Radio Fire," about sitting by the Pacific Ocean, listening to the radio with his friend whose wife had left him without warning.

"His eyes were wet wounded rugs.

Like some kind of strange vacuum cleaner I tried to console him."

I understand that rugs cannot feel pain, cannot be wounded, and that vacuum cleaners are machines, which are the opposite of something that can truly console.  And yet, I see his friend's eyes, their baggish wet sadness, and I feel the awkward pain the narrator feels in his inability to do anything about it.  Since happening upon this short, page-and-half story, I've always admired Brautigan's style: he's not really trying to be a good writer.  And, in my mind, that is much of what makes him a great writer.

--

In Professor Sean Lovelace's "English 409: Writing in the Community" course I took this spring, I supposedly tutored a 7th grader in poetry and nonfiction.  In reality, I ended up learning as much from her as she learned from me.  As I look back on some of the poems I wrote off-the-cuff during our brief, silly writing sessions, I see some of the most creative comparisons I've come up with in years.  I can only assume this is because, in my efforts to free her mind from the expectations of "good" writing, showing her how fun and creative writing can be, I was reminding myself of the same.

Because I was writing for her, and for myself, and no one else, I came up with things like

"His mind was a diseased rat, playing jazz on the roof of Wal-mart..."

and

"Humpback whales are the only whales
known to sing.  They swell
with notes in their teeth
like galoshes."

--

To summarize the wisdom I have learned over the last semester in one trite piece of advice: write bad poetry.

Return to the homeland of your youth, that untouchable notebook of scribblings so incomprehensible and heartfelt that you could never bear the thought of showing them to anyone.  Dig up one of those early poems and see if you can't see a glimmer of creativity and rare openness; learn from your former self, the writer who was free to say whatever he wanted because no one ever had to see it.

Beginning the process of growing up and moving beyond the hermit-writer you once were, opening the shades and stepping out to become a literary citizen, is not a call to leave behind your vulnerabilities and fragile words of fumbling elegance (and, at times, outright stupidity).  It is the challenge to take those words and have the confidence to step into a community who will either accept them, or not.  Trust your words to be worth your time, and let yourself take ungraceful and arduous steps towards the writer you wish to become.  

I'll be right there, fumbling beside you every step of the way, like a drunk baby bunny trying to capture fireflies in its paws mid-flight.