July 19: Annoy Stradlater, Broke Any Rules, Fairy Tale Friday

I didn't even answer him.  I just threw the pieces in the wastebasket.  Then I lay down on my bed, and we didn't say anything for a long time.  He got all undressed, down to his shorts, and I lay on my bed and lit a cigarette.  You weren't allowed to smoke in the dorm, but you could do it late at night when everybody was asleep or out and nobody could smell the smoke.  Besides, I did it to annoy Stradlater.  It drove him crazy when you broke any rules.  He never smoked in the dorm.  It was only me.

Holden doesn't follow rules.  He wrote an essay for his dorm roommate, Stradlater, and didn't follow the rubric of the assignment.  That's why Stradlater's mad at Holden.  Holden's pissed at Stradlater because he thinks Stradlater tried to take advantage of Jane Gallagher, the girl Holden likes.  So, Holden starts smoking to annoy Stradlater.

Most anybody who knows me will tell you I'm not much of a rule follower.  I like making the rules, not heeding them.  That's why I enjoy teaching in a college classroom.  I get to set up my own little rule book, called a syllabus, and, if you want to live in my kingdom, so to speak, you have to abide by my rules.

When I was younger, I guess I was more like Stradlater when it came to rules.  I didn't get two advanced degrees in English by thumbing my nose at the system, and I haven't been teaching at the university for 17 years by rocking the boat.  No, I pick and choose my battles.  I think that's why I became a poet.

You see, a lot of people think a poet is a writer who simply doesn't follow the conventions of grammar.  I have met my share of young graduate student poets who don't know the difference between a run-on sentence and a death sentence.  I contend that poets should be the ultimate grammarians.  In order to break the rules, you first have to know the rules.  Really well.  Nothing incenses me more than reading badly-written poems.  Having been a poetry editor and teacher for a while now, I can tell the difference between a poet who is intentionally breaking grammatical rules versus someone who calls him/herself a poet to cover third grade writing skills.

In my poems, I sometimes break the rules, but I do it for a reason or effect.  And I'm aware of the rule that I'm breaking.  That's the difference.  I know the rules.  Therefore, I can break the rules.  Any poet reading this post knows what I'm talking about.

Which brings me to my fairy tale for this Friday.

Once upon a time, a young monk named Thelonius decided he was a poet.  The problem was that Thelonius had never really paid much attention in school.  He couldn't spell.  He didn't know the difference between a paragraph and a pair of shoes.  And he thought iambic pentameter was a Greek god.

The monk Thelonius started sending his poetry to various monasteries around the kingdom to see if he could get his poems published in one of the Monkly Gazettes.  He never received so much as a rejection scroll.

One day, however, a raven flew through the window of Thelonius' cell in the monastery.  When the young monk tried to shoo the bird back out the window, the raven looked at him and said, "Nevermore."

"What did you say?" Thelonius said.

"Nevermore," the raven said again.

"Maybe this is a sign," Thelonius exclaimed.  "Perhaps I should write a poem titled 'The Raven' in which I lament the loss of a woman named Lenore."

"No," the raven said.  "It means don't send out any more of your poems.  They suck."

Moral of the story:  Keep your windows closed.

And Saint Marty lived happily ever after.

Listen to the raven...