On Writing The Nasty

I groove on writing and talking about nasty things as long as the premise of "said nasty" doesn't over shadow the development of emotion in a piece. When writing about bodily functions I find that most times I wander into the following arenas: humor, shame, guilt, or admiration--I end writing this emotion most because I have this sort of twisted approach where I like to believe that something normally considered gross can always be made beautiful if the subject matter is dealt with responsibly (by this I mean honestly). Naturally, there are other emotions that can arise when writing "the nasty," but I find these four popping up (pun intended) the most.

When writing "the nasty" I always like to keep myself from taking what I consider the easy road, simply writing about shit or puke or zits or rashes or worms or hemmoroids, etc. A good guide I've found to keep from writing on the surface level of the nasty is to think of people whose every other word is fuck. Fuck is a fantastic word, and during an interview with Bob Hicok once, he and I decided the reason why we like it so much is that the word has this animalistic, mono-syllabic howl to it. At the same time, you don't ever want a piece of writing to simply be a yard with a dog barking in the middle of the night. Nobody likes that in real life and nobody likes that in literature because a power word has now been over used to the point it creates white noise. I think the same goes for writing about say, shitting in public or making love to a former girlfriend while she's on her period or being diagnosed with scabies or having pinworms, of which I've written about each of these topics and have hopefully written about them honestly. And that's all that they are, topics to use as springboards into bigger emotions. A lot of the early drafts of these pieces subtextually said, "Hey, this happened to me. Isn't that strange? Isn't that sick? Don't you sort of feel bad for me?" which means that the pieces were ultimately navel gazing, unimportant to anyone, and begging the question that all bad writing begs, "So what?"

When pushing a nasty topic to a wider emotional range I also like to think of what Billy Collins said about how a poet uses an image to gain access to a larger truth. Probably the best example of Collins executing this is in his poem "The Lanyard." Now, on the surface level, Collins begins with the fact that he, as a boy, made his mother a lanyard at summer camp. That's the beginning topic or as Dick Hugo would term "triggering subject." Collins does not leave the "triggering subject" as Hugo so adimently suggests doing in his collection of essays, "The Triggering Town." Rather, Collins captializes on the image throughout the poem to build an organic development of the truth that we can never re-pay our mothers for what they have done for us, though, as children, we think the little nick-nacks we make for our mothers are a fair trade for their sacrifices.

So what the hell does this have to do with writing "the nasty"? I like to think it has everything to do with effectively pushing a nasty premise toward what is hopefully a profound realization. Now, I don't sit around reading over my work saying things like "Okay, that was profound. Good job, self," but I do constantly ask myself what are my stakes and what am I risking about myself, which I think is the only way anybody might ever be able to traipse into writing a single profound thought.

Writing nasty always has shock value to it and that's something the writer should always be mindful of. I've read a lot of nasty that I don't value because it never got past what I have termed for myself as "the whoopty-doo factor." For example, you were busted for swimming naked by the cops, whoopty-doo. The whoopty-doo is always an indicator that a writer is not taking his or her topic seriously and, most of all, the topic is not important to the writer. I like to think that the only way to write anything worth anyone's time is to consider the topic to be as important as a vital organ. Until the the topic is considered that important, that vital, that necessary, the writing will always yeild an unimportance.

When I started writing my poem "Shark Week," a poem about making love to a former girlfriend in the early, "heavy" stage of her period, I made a lot of rookie mistakes which were subconscious clues to the fact I was scared to write the poem, scared to admit something hard to admit about myself, mistakes I could only overcome upon considering the facts of myself, facts of my fears, facts of my own hipocrasy and contradictions--I love, love, love making love to you except when you bleed. I wrote many drafts that were too dependent on the bleeding. I was making the mistake of not valuing the obvious fact involved in this making love, the fact that bodies are bodies and if you are in love, you are in love and that love, if it is real love, trumps the surface level reality that people are every day animals with highly evolved brains. And the fact that we are animal is a fact of hope because this means we can reproduce.

As I drafted toward an emotional truth, I discovered that the poem had very little concern for the fact my then girlfriend was on her period. When our making love while she was bleeding became whoopty-doo, I knew I was on the right track to writing something important for myself, but, most of all, our act, something important for us. I was now writing the facts of my own fears and regrets, the fact that I regretted something as simple as red liquid creating sexual distance every month. And that sexual distance was my fault. I began to understand that I'd failed her in a very tragic way; I'd failed at staying true to our love by letting her peroid trump our most honest act, and I'd let us be trumped for too long. The best way to feel shame is to know you've been bossed around by fear. The best way to overcome shame is to start bossing around your fears by pointing a finger at your fear and saying, "You scare me, but I'm not going to give you that power anymore."

"Shark Week" is ultimately about overcoming failure by admitting and correcting a history of failing. The poem is short and lyric. If the poem were a long narrative, I'd be entertaining mistake because I'd be letting the history of fault trump overcoming the mistake; I'd be spending too much time writing about what is least important; I wouldn't be able to reach the point of how a fear of blood is not allowed to boss around love between man and woman anymore.

When I reflect on "Shark Week," I very rarely think of a bleeding vagina or sex. I very rarely think of the poem's initiating topic because the poem's point is so much more important to me, and the point has very little to do with blood or sex or being physically naked. The point is more emotionally naked, emotionally honest, emotionally sorry and apologetic of a faulted history of withholding.