murder.booklocker.com

[Niama Leslie Williams, Ph.D., better known as Dr. Ni, is a radio talk show host. I recently asked if she would do a guest post about what she's looking for in the work submitted to her.]

I was standing on a hot, sweaty street corner waiting, interminably, for the slow-ass 23 bus.  The six or seven of us gathered there quietly not fighting for the miniscule space in the shade under a definitely unloved something straining to be a tree.  We couldn’t fault it; it was trying with everything it had.

The only sources of true entertainment were the two addicts, an interracial couple, madly in love, dancing, walking, talking and occasionally nuzzling while waiting for the bus.  Their love, we could see, was clear, pure, honest, and vivacious, and they didn’t care who saw.  Neither looked a long way from their last high, but my heart leapt when I saw the female, either Latina or white, holding fiercely to and reading, a book.  Literature, I thought, in the hands of someone who needs it! Then I saw the title.  Knife Assassin.

So when you ask me the rationale behind the choices for my radio show, “Poetry & Prose & Anything Goes with Dr. Ni,” I tell you that I want my listeners to hear the best writing out there; if they tune in, I want their ears dripping in anticipation.  I want their appetite for good words whetted and then sated in the way that only sweet potato cheesecake can make a gourmand smile.

Keep in mind that I am, and have been for 13+ years, a professor of literature, and therefore I want poems and prose with evidence of study and the development of craft.  To give you an idea, here is a definition of poetic art that I gave to the Kelly Writers House for whom I did a poetry workshop in 2005:

Why poetry:  Poetry works because it bypasses the intellect and goes straight for the gut, the soul, what lies underneath your tame and ordinary conventions, ideas, and feelings about the world.  It takes you out of your commonplace feelings and arouses, touches something deeper, something you feel only in your solar plexus, something you feel only when someone surprises you and knocks the wind, momentarily, out of your sails.  That gasp for breath, of recognition, that’s what you’re going for as a poet.  You want your audience to recognize but be stunned, startled by that recognition.  You want them shocked awake by what they instantaneously understand.Poetic language: By poetic language I mean metaphor, simile and imagery as your nouns, verbs, adjectives, adverbs; as your building blocks with which to communicate.  Poetic writing is about density (of image and metaphor) and compactness of language; you are communicating in symbols, but you are compacting those symbols so tightly that you express 5 pages in six or seven stanzas.  Your medium is the comparison, the putting of a thought or concept into its mirror, an image:  the way in which a flower unfolds, the way in which a bee approaches and pollinates, the way in which a mirror smashes against a wall and proliferates into a million and one shards.  Tell us about your news item and its effect on your world using image and metaphor and simile.  Tell us by showing us through what you see, what you hear, what you taste, what you envision, what you hold every day in your hands.

Do you see what I mean by development/evidence of craft?  I want poems and stories for the show that leave a reader THINKING, recovering from an emotional onslaught, yes, absolutely, but I want their brain teased into motion as well.  Density, complexity, sophistication:  I want all three evident in the prose or poem, and it must be a great listening experience as well; if writing is not fun for the reader, does not pull the reader in—especially against his or her will—if it is not magnetic, kinetic, and instructive what then is the point and who will ever care?
   
You may wonder why I put “and instructive” in italics.  I am one of those old saws who still believes in the ideals of the Black Arts Movement.  Literature is supposed to give us tools for living, is supposed to tell us how others survived the impossible, the improbable, the unjust so that we too can do the same—with our dignity intact, with a sense, even, of majesty and grace.  Literature is supposed to arm us for Mr. Charlie, whoever and whatever our Mr. Charlie looks like.  That tree needed love and attention and water, and that female in love and recovery needed stronger sustenance than Knife Assassin would ever be able to offer.  To face the cruel twists and turns of fate sober will require knowledge, solace, tales sophisticated and honest with characters real in their bravery; characters enough like her to help her envision acting with similar courage and fortitude.
   
The 23 bus did, eventually, come, and I left that tree there, alone, unloved, unwatered.  Soon to be another fatality in this city of mounting bodies.  As I boarded the bus I tried very hard not to look at that woman and the book that, in her hands, would continue to break my heart.