What does it mean?
Not all things in life are as they seem. Secrets will always lurk under the table, whether or not to acknowledge their existence and play off of them is just one aspect of a person that we call creativity.
Those secrets can be damaging, embarrassing or even something just simply forgotten. Peeking under the table and confronting what might be underneath; something that people would rather not talk about – is to do something courageous. It does not need to be something factual, something real; it can be any deep dark thing looming there. It does not have to be something from under your table; it can be under anyone’s – fictional or real. Facing, realizing, capturing or retelling events that would feel more comfortable in the shadows, is like holding the boogey man by his feet and not allowing him to run away to scare others.
The works presented here harbor these efforts. They figuratively lift up the table cloth. Looking at what some might call the darker side of life – forgetting though that without this 'dark side', the bright side wouldn’t be nearly as bright. After throwing out those simplistic labels, writing is truly only about documenting the realness and depth of the human condition as well as of the world all around us. In here, a few pieces of written art take on the perspective of a small child, another of a wealthy middle-aged woman, all creating characters the reader can step into and others just commentate on the world as they perceive it. It is not only the world that is a wondrous thing, it is also seeing the way in which others view it that allows it to sparkle.
“Don’t be scared of the shadows…
…it just means that there is a light nearby”
I use the term written art throughout this website because I believe that term to be very true. In the textbook Imaginative Writing: The Elements of the Craft by Janet Burroway, it states in the introduction that “art sets out to affect us emotionally and intellectually”(xxvii). Just a tiny bit later, on page 4, there’s another line: “An Image appeals to the senses”. Those two quotes go hand in hand –writing is art!! That is a fact that I had forgotten – misplaced in my mind. After seeing the coloration between all the forms of art and the fight to express the hidden, a new world of creativity seemed to just step out of the shadows. This creative writing class really did teach me something, or rather renewed my passion and enlightened me.
Gaining the tools to know how to develop characters and settings with depth and substance, not only leads to a potentially enjoyable experience to the reader, but also makes the art of writing extremely enjoyable to the author. The reader gets swept into a world of the authors making, but only getting a glimpse into that universe, experiencing the environment that the writer leads them to. The writer, on the other hand, could act like a child running wild in a meadow, an amusement park or the zoo – wherever there is not adult supervision. Writers get the chance to experience the entirety of it – a unique world all of their own. That’s how I look at creative writing and that is why I find it so very delightful. Whether or not I’m considered a good writer is inconsequential for the most part honestly. I thoroughly enjoy fondling words and being a creator, if others happen to like it, that’s even better. In “Writing off the Subject”, Richard Hugo made a few very good suggestions, one of those being: ‘To write a poem you must have a streak of arrogance, not in real life I hope’. I took the liberty and changed one word in that quote to make it a custom fit; I took out the word poem and replaced it with anything, now it’s all nice and snug. Each unique creation I have put on display here in my anthology embraces the arrogance, meaning that they are unabashed and speak of their own idea of reality.
These pieces allow the reader to peer into the souls of different characters – growing from their mistakes, seeing their motivations, feeling their pain, learning life’s trials along with them and sharing in their experience of growth. In one of the excerpts from "From a Bookstore in Central Florida", Peter M. Ives tells the story of when a boy and his family get their first color television.
“What bothered me was that, once I realized my imagination had been supplying the color, I became almost immediately incapable of suspending my disbelief: cowboys bled black after gunfights, rivers ran the color of pewter, leaves and fields drained to gray indeterminacy.”
This quote is able to share with the reader a child’s early glimpse into reality. The story of this child’s experience is likely very familiar to people; the moment of sudden realization of the existence and importance of the imagination. This usually quick and unprovoked attack on youthful imagination leads to its withering and the growth spurt of the adult mind. "From a Bookstore in Central Florida" is included in this anthology because it speaks of some truths that may not have been realized, or have been neglected or possibly completely forgotten.
Not all of the pieces included in this compilation speak of such direct concepts though. For example Tom Robbins’s "Triplets", supplies a more comic tone to make light of the heaviest of life’s obstacles. Here are two lines from his poem to give you a feel of it: ‘I went to Satan's house. / I felt a little out of place’. The theme of this final project even applies to this poem because Tom Robbins touches on three of the things that haunt all people, but acknowledging that you may have succumbed to them is still kept in the table.
The arrangement of pieces in this final anthology was quite basic. The Contents page is organized by category then alphabetically. The Poems and Prose/Short Stories pages are then simply arranged by the pieces complexity as I feel it. I could not think of another way to do it. Most all of the pieces in here offer a vivid reading experience and are enjoyable without the need to look deeper into them; but that depth is still offered. They share or speak of some type of experience that usually carries with it an out of sight, out of mind mentality.
I decided to include some of my own and some borrowed photos in this anthology because I wanted to share some things that continue to inspire me and also show that the perception of the world is relative to the observer, but the beauty that it offers is universal.
--Please Enjoy--
B.Walker
☆*:.｡. o(≧▽≦)o .｡.:*☆
