Hello folks–
Just a note to let you all know I’ve moved to Blogger at this address:
http://corramcfeydon.blogspot.com – (in corra’s words)
I’m leaving this blog open so people can find me. :)
I love WordPress for its professional design and ‘page’ feature, but it’s frustrating that every time I want to add a widget I’m told it’s impossible because I blog with WordPress.
It was a tough decision, though, because I do love this blog and WordPress. The widget thing just couldn’t be beat.
Thanks to everyone for following my posts here!! I truly appreciate it. I can only imagine it’s frustrating having to change your Blogroll and feed for me, so I apologize sincerely for being so hard to pin down. I’m this way in person, too. I show up and you have me for just a moment before I’m off and running again.
Anyhow, I’m still around, just at a new address.
For those who wanted to use the NaNo December Extension article to post your word counts, it’s been moved to my new blog: december extension for nano writers short their 50k. I’ll be there soon to post my word counts. I just have to get through exams. :)
Anyhow, thanks truly for sticking with me. I appreciate each and every one of you—the folks I knew before, and the folks I’ve met while here.
See you at the new address!!
~ Corra
All right. Here’s the question nobody wants me to ask:
Which is better? Blogger or WordPress?
I feel a bit loath to bring this up as I spent my first several weeks as a WordPress Blogger mumbling under my breath about the incompetency of Blogger. (And complaining to a few Blogger users.) I didn’t like commenting there because of the irritating features: most of the time I had to post three or four times to get my comment to stick, and then there’s the annoying letter identification thing (slow!!!) Spam protection at Blogger cannot compare to WordPress’s Akismet.
So why the article today? Because I’ve had a change of heart.
I know. Holy shit, right? Many of you followed me over from my first WordPress blog (In Corra’s Words), and you’ve no idea how grateful I am for your patience, especially now that I’m considering switching again – and going back to the original blog name!!
And to Blogger.
Why? Why you say.
Research. It all comes down to research, my friends. And I’ve done my homework. Something my impetuous spirit didn’t allow a month or so ago when I set my cap for WordPress (the first blog I clicked upon.)
I’ve heard a lot of my Blogger buddies saying they intend to switch to WordPress soon. A couple days ago I’d have applauded the idea.
Now I ask – why? I’m really curious!! Why would you switch?
All the research I’ve done on blogging encourages a clean presentation and the ability to place SHARE icons and FACEBOOK feeds, etc, etc, on your blog.
Blogger has WordPress licked when it comes to advertising yourself. And isn’t that at least 50% of the goal when you post an article? To get people to read it? (The other 50% is self-expression, something that cannot be appreciated if no one is aware you exist.)
Some things I’ve learned this week:
- WordPress has a clean presentation, but it lacks the interactive features that can be found at Blogger.
- Blogger has more capacity for widgets that can encourage traffic. Way more.
- WordPress has the ability to make separate pages, but at Blogger you can set links in your sidebar to note posts of interest… which is pretty much the same thing.
- I did a search for blogs on literature the other day in WordPress, and that’s what drove me to the other team: NOTHING! WordPress boasts a great community, but when it comes to talking literature, it falls short.
- Blogger, on the other hand, has a great many sites keen to my interests. That’s the community I want linked to me.
- At Blogger you can delete comments without going to the Dashboard. And when you comment on other Blogger blogs, you can delete your comments there, too.
- Blogger users can CONTROL how annoying their comment posts are. They can opt out of comment moderation, and even opt out of word verification if they’d like.
- I wouldn’t opt out of comment moderation, however, because unlike WordPress, Blogger doesn’t have Akismet spam protection.
- Blogger lets you advertise for free, and WordPress doesn’t. Not my interest personally, but it’s a certain asset for folks hoping to make easy money off their blog.
- The Blogroll? Adding links at Blogger is as easy as clicking a FOLLOW button on a page and then saying, “Yes, add them to my Blogroll.” You don’t even have to type in the title. And even cooler, it bumps the folks who just posted articles to the top of the Blogroll list.
- So yeah, it’s pretty annoying I might be moving over there, but I’ve added you all to my blogroll, and you bump right to the top whenever you publish an article!
- You can edit posts and your side bar widgets right from your Blogger page. You don’t have to click to the Dashboard.
- There’s no visitor tracking capability at Blogger, but I believe there are widgets that could be added to perform the service (albeit at a different site). I haven’t researched enough to verify this as fact.
- At Blogger you control the design of your page WITHOUT PAYING. Font color/font style? Your call!! You can even move things from the sidebar to the top and bottom of the blog in a matter of seconds. It’s not nearly as limited as WordPress in design. You get oodles of control over font, widget, color, design, etc.
As a case in point, I’ve set up a very early design for Blogger:
I’m pretty sure I’ll be moving there.
WordPress has a far move navigable Dashboard.
But the value of those Google gadgets? The ability to link up and follow one another? It might exceed the ‘pages’ and hi-tech dashboard.
I’d love to hear from people who recently used Blogger and switched to WordPress. What drove you here? Honestly?
What makes the folks at Blogger say they want to switch to WordPress?
Frank honesty is always welcome and encouraged!
Happy writing.
Hi folks!
I can’t believe I’m entering my fourth week here at the blog. It’s great fun so far!
Jumping right into then–
This week I added an author interview to the site:
an author interview with myself (since nobody famous offered to interview me)
In addition I posted six articles:
my recent visit to camp dennison - A write-up about an American Civil War camp in Cincinnati, Ohio.
poll results: in what genre do you prefer to read/write? - The results from my recent poll.
“Laughter through tears is my favorite emotion.” - A look at dialogue in the 1989 movie ‘Steel Magnolias.’
tips for beginning bloggers - Tips for writing a successful blog.
fellow blogger calls for writers to write - My entry for Cassandra Jade’s series of writer responses to the prompt Writing is… at Cassandra Jade in the Realm.
december extension for nano writers short their 50k - It ain’t over for this writer!
My pick for Article of the Week goes to Doralynn Kennedy at Journeys in Ink for her informative post about the work involved to promote your novel and find an agent in Ready, Set, Promote. Doralynn is recently published and offers a fresh take on the marketing side of being an author. Check it out!
A few other great links from this week:
See if your blog meets the industry demands in Mike Smith’s How to avoid these common mistakes in blog design at designbump.
Literary agent Nathan Bransford lists The Top 10 Myths About E-Books at Nathan Bransford – Literary Agent.
Mystery writer Elizabeth Spann Craig of Mystery Writing is Murder spills the truth about the sweet life of a published author in Writing: the Fantasy and the Reality.
Dody Jane at Paraphernalia talks about the history, literature, politics and her personal perspective on Thanksgiving in a fascinating post titled “There is one day that is ours. Thanksgiving Day is the one day that is purely American.” O. Henry. Dody is my blogging hero. Check her out. She never fails to captivate with her knowledge of history and literature.
I’ve begun a weight-gaining diet which is certainly helping my writing muse! I’m eating whole-grain bagles, fresh oranges, cheddar cheese, raisins, etc, and am already up five pounds — for a grand total of 88 pounds.
It’s amazing how the brain cells hop when you’re well-fed. If you’re swamped with college, writing, term papers, NaNo, etc, don’t be like me and forget to eat. It fuzzies the brain. Take the time to nourish yourself and drink plenty of water.
Congrats to all those who won NaNo!!
That’s it for this week.
As ever—
Happy writing.
Are you squeezing everything you can out of your blog? Have you got a goal, a plan, a topic? Do you even know why you’re blogging?
I’m a brand new blogger, and as I’m prone to do, I did a bit of research on how to blog.
Here’s just a little of what I learned:
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Tips for Beginning Bloggers
- It’s a good idea to keep your blog posts within 400-800 words. A long-winded post will overwhelm your visitors and turn them away from your site. The average reader spends 96 seconds reading your blog.
- Depending on your blog ‘topic,’ long posts could be fine, so long as they are focused and offer solid information. You might try mixing up the post length (as I do) or creating a reliable rhythm. For example, if you like long posts, be consistent about it. Your readers will come to expect it from you, and the ones who come back will be the ones who take the time for lengthier posts. You could also try the bullet-point/numbered system (as I do here) to keep the reader’s eye traveling down the post. Most online readers skip over words or “speed read,” but they might take the time to skim the highlights in a long post with bullet points.
- Have a goal. Know who your audience is today, and who they’ll be tomorrow. Research the sites being read by the target audience you’ve identified. Know what you want from the blog: fun? fame? money? (Or like me, just a chance to express yourself?)
- Establish credibility early. Pick a topic for your blog around which everything centers, and deliver solid articles about that topic. Make sure you know what you’re talking about. If readers catch many mistakes, you’ll lose credibility—and likely your audience.
- Be yourself when you blog. Don’t write like a reporter. (Oops!)
- Engage your readers. Don’t write a letter to yourself when you’re blogging. Write to the people who’ve come to read your words. (If you want to build an audience.) Otherwise your blog is tantamount to standing out on your front porch and starting up a one-person dialogue with the cars that weave past. Yeah… no one is actually going to be listening.
- Everything that you do to your blog is to get readers to read your first sentence. That includes, headlines, photos, links, etc. It’s the same deal as journalism—the same deal as fiction. Your first sentence either makes or breaks the sale. It should engage the reader.
- Try to post at least three times a week, but don’t let it get you down if you can’t. More important than frequency is consistency. If once a week or once every two weeks is your preference, make it count. Write a quality post, and be consistent next month.
- When someone takes the time to comment on your blog, thank them for their visit. You’re very likely to lose readers if they repeatedly post their thoughts and receive no acknowledgement from the author.
- When someone takes the time to comment on your blog, thank them for their visit. You’re very likely to lose readers if they repeatedly post their thoughts and receive no acknowledgement from the author.
- Yes, I know I posted that last one twice. It bears repeating.
- Don’t clutter up your side bar. Apparently a busy sidebar means readers may miss the main articles in your blog for all the distractions. Better to have a nice, clean presentation than a busy bar full of blogger knick-knacks, awards, categories, recent posts, top posts, top clicks, twitter posts, etc, etc. Pick and choose what works best for your site. There’s no need to use EVERY widget. (In lieu of this tip I cleaned up my sidebar!)
- When someone takes the time to comment on your blog, thank them for their visit. You’re very likely to lose readers if they repeatedly post their thoughts and receive no acknowledgement from the author.
- Mm-hm… Answer your audience!!
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That’s the research I stirred up today.
What are your thoughts? Can a blog be engaging without following these guidelines? Can a post be long and free of bullet points and still have an audience?
Are we ‘See Jane Run’ bloggers, or are we podium hogs?
(Uh-oh! That’s 720 words!)
A tear-jerker scene!
Here’s how to write emotion, and do it authentically. Wow, this sent shivers up my spine. (I watched it tonight, and yes–I cried.)
*spoiler follows*
For those who haven’t seen this movie, M’Lynn (Sally Fields’) daughter Shelby (Julia Roberts) has just died.
I love watching movies as a way to see a scene come to life. I can visualize how I might write it.
It’s a good exercise:
And in written form? Equally effective.
I love the authenticity, the ‘real’ factor, in the dialogue:
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Shelby: I am going to be very, very careful, nobody is going to be hurt or disappointed or even inconvenienced.
M’Lynn: Least of all Jackson, I’m sure.
Shelby: You’re jealous, because you no longer have a say so in what I do and that drives you up the wall. You’re ready to spit nails because you can’t call the shots.
M’Lynn: I did not raise my daughter to talk to me like this.
Shelby: Yes, you did.
M’Lynn: Oh no, I didn’t.
Shelby: Whenever any of us asked you what you wanted for us when we grew up what did you say?
M’Lynn: Shelby, I’m not in the mood to play games.
Shelby: Just tell me what you said, Mama, what did you say?
M’Lynn: The only thing I have ever said to you, ever, is that I want you to be happy.
Shelby: Okay, the one thing that would make me happy is to have a baby. If I could adopt one I would, but I can’t. I’m going to have a baby, and I wish you’d be happy too.
M’Lynn: I’ll tell you what I wish. Well, I don’t know what I wish.
Shelby: Mama, I don’t know why you have to make everything so difficult. I look at having a baby as the opportunity of a lifetime. Sure there may be risk involved, but that’s true for anybody. But you get through it and life goes on. And when it’s all said and done there will be a little piece of immortality with Jackson’s good looks and my sense of style, I hope. Please, please I need your support. I would rather have thirty minutes of wonderful than a lifetime of nothing special.
Memorable quotes for
Steel Magnolias (1989)
| young adult fiction | 3 votes — 13% |
| historical fiction | 3 votes — 13% |
| humor | 2 votes — 9% |
| science fiction | 2 votes — 9% |
| thriller | 2 votes — 9% |
| literary fiction | 2 votes — 9% |
| romance | 1 votes — 4% |
| war and military | 1 votes — 4% |
| poetry | 1 votes — 4% |
| fantasy | 1 votes — 4% |
| memoir | 1 votes — 4% |
| horror | 1 votes — 4% |
| non-fiction | 1 votes — 4% |
| adventure | 1 votes — 4% |
| mystery | 0 votes — 0% |
| editorial | 0 votes — 0% |
| western | 0 votes — 0% |
We had 22 votes total.
My personal favorite genre is literary fiction, followed closely by historical fiction. :)
There was some discussion amongst voters about the fact that people sometimes (often?) read a genre they don’t write.
My apologies for not taking this into account when I created the poll! I write what I like to read, so it didn’t occur to me others might be different. As such, who knows if the results are at all significant! :D
Thanks for a great turn-out just the same!
Happy writing, and Happy Thanksgiving~
Corra
On October 31 of this year, I joined fellow classmates on an excursion to Cincinnati’s Camp Dennison, a camp established at the order of Ohio governor William Dennison when the people of Cincinnati demanded a fort to protect its citizens at the start of the American Civil War.
The day blew cold and rainy, the ambiance amplified by the musket-fire reverberation of rangers nearby practicing at a firing range. The camp seemed to echo the voices of former soldiers from the 9th and 10th Ohio. I felt them in the air and appreciated the cold wind; it let me experience what they must have felt in bitter winter months as they marched the parade ground.
Founded by George McClellan of the Ohio Volunteer Militia at a location selected by William Rosecrans, the site served as a training camp for Federal soldiers during the war. Rosecrans chose a location originally called New Germany for the camp because of its proximity to the Little Miami River and the Little Miami Railroad as well as the fact that it was twelve miles from Cincinnati—close enough the men could take a train to protect the city if necessary, yet far enough away to keep the troops from filling up the city’s streets as they hunted for liquor and women. McClellan named the camp after Governor William Dennison.
The first place we visited while touring the camp was the “Honeymoon Cottage,” which was used as a guard shack during the war. Upon renovation of this cottage decades later, bullet holes were found inside the house from a rifle shooting off in 1861. Hog hairs were found in the plaster of the fireplace.
A bike path replaces the old railroad. We walked along this path to reach the main part of the camp where the barracks and parade ground stretched out amid flat grass and mud. It’s believed the hospital and dentist operation lay across the parade ground in an area where teeth and old medicine bottles were found buried in the dirt. The location of the camp dump is unknown, though it certainly holds artifacts in layers several feet deep. The location of the gravel pits and artillery were on the opposite side of the railroad tracks.
An anonymous diary from 1862 lists 150 grave sites at Camp Dennison. The hospital stopped functioning in November of 1865. Bodies of soldiers were buried in the town cemetery until families arrived to ferry them home. Most of the Confederate bodies were transported to a POW camp in Columbus called Camp Chase, but many of the families didn’t retrieve them as the journey from states like Texas, Louisiana, and Tennessee was too long and arduous.
Many of the old houses on the camp were built with lumber and torn down after the war. Some African-American descendants of the free black men who worked at the camp still live in the area. Many of the trees at the camp were chopped down for lumber, and the buildings were mottled with knotholes. One night in May of 1864 snow swept through these knotholes, and by the following morning it had warmed enough to cause mudslides.
In July of 1863 Morgan’s Raiders cut through the camp, blocking and derailing the train on the Little Miami Railroad. The driver was killed, and there are still stories of him walking the tracks today—carrying a lantern. Since he was killed during daylight and wouldn’t have need of a lantern, some question the ghost stories. One classmate suggests the driver would have used a lantern as a signal even in daylight, thus validating the tale.
Morgan and his raiders nearly attacked and burned Camp Dennison during their visit. They decided against the time and effort that would have been required. As they cut across Clermont County, the Loveland Militia mobilized and fired shots. The “battle” is considered nothing more than a skirmish. A couple Confederates were shot and killed by Ward’s Corner Road, and a civilian named Abraham Oscamp died.
Morgan and his men spent the night in Williamsburg. One Clermont County teenager protested having his horse “traded” to Morgan and pursued him to get it back. Morgan agreed he could have it if he won a fight, and when the youth bested him and prepared to pop out his eyeball, Morgan surrendered the horse. He would have then shot the teenager, but the other Confederates talked him out of it, reminding him he’d lost a fair fight. The teenager was released.
There were a few suicides at Camp Dennison involving soldiers who threw themselves into oncoming trains. Several ladies of the night worked at the camp, and as punishment for pursuing one of these women, a soldier was tied to her with a post down his back and made to march up and down the parade ground. Another story about Camp Dennison involves letter-writing between a soldier and a woman living near the camp—followed by a marriage after the war.
A memorial on site lists many of the troops that stayed at the camp during the war, including those who lingered only two or three days, passing through to acquire weapons. Tennessee regiments, such as the 2nd Tennessee, were not included on the memorial.
It’s estimated that during the war, 100,000 men passed through Camp Dennison. It was the second largest camp behind Chase and was leased to the state of Ohio after the war. It served briefly as a WWII camp, with US Calvary maintaining horses on site through the 1930s.
Now it exists as a silent, ghostly reminder of the past—a hushed field of footpaths and mud slides where students amble to hear about the history of their city, and professors, writers and historians hunt for long-discarded teeth, diaries and medicine bottles.
Hi folks!
This week I posted five articles:
can a 1757 essay relate to readers today? – A look at Benjamin Franklin’s 250-year-old essay ‘The Way to Wealth.’
comparing the greats: dickens, shelley, and keats – For me, one stands the tallest.
margaret mitchell’s america – Video clips from the turn of the century through 1939.
why do we blog? - Does it really do a thing to boost book sales?
a peek at the past – godey’s lady’s book - A sampling from the engraved pages of 1855-1858 Godey’s Lady’s Book.
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My pick for Article of the Week goes to Courtney Vail at Creative Burst for her inspiring post about going for the writing gold medal in Are You Striving to Become a Champion? The post stirred me to action. Check it out!
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A few other great links from this week:
Elizabeth Spann Craig at Mystery Writing is Murder for a timely post about how to separate your writing life from your personal life on Facebook…. called Facebook .
Tirzahlaughs at Journeys in Ink for her unique ‘inspirational’ voice in You Suck! She doesn’t hold your hand while giving you a pep talk, but somehow you still walk away feeling better.
Cassandra Jade at Cassandra Jade in the Realm stirs up an interesting discussion in Who Says Stereotypes Are Bad? Check it out!
Ama Adjapon at I Think of Ghana for a fascinating video link in Orange Prize for Literature winner Chimamanda Adichie and the single story. Chimamanda Adichie encourages writers to include their culture in their work. The video is about twenty minutes long, but it’s worth a look if you can take the time.
David Hunter at The Writers Den for Critical Mass, a tongue-in-cheek editorial on Twitter courtesy and angry readers.
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A bit of a blog overhaul this week! Journal of an Unpublished Writer has become From the Desk of a Writer and will focus more on literature and writing articles than my previous blog.
I’ve added several new pages to replace the writing journal and scribble room:
my favorite poet – walt whitman
the indomitable peggy mitchell
margaret mitchell book and biography links
read chapter one – gone with the wind
rare film footage, home videos, documentaries, and trailer from ‘gone with the wind‘
watch the movie – gone with the wind
Thanks for sticking with me while I work out the kinks!
I’ll report on the results for the writing poll, In What Genre Do You Prefer to Read/Write? late this week or early next week.
That’s about it for now.
Best of luck in the final week of NaNo! And to all those traveling for the holiday, be safe and a very Happy Thanksgiving to you.
As ever—
Happy writing.
The beginning of each issue of Godey’s Lady’s Book between1855-1858 presented a hand-tinted engraving of current fashions followed by several pages of engravings to illustrate stories, hats, shawls, etc.
The Book ended with a description by the “fashion editress” of the plates.
Admired fellow writer and lit lover Dody Jane features fashion plates on her fascinating blog Paraphernalia. She’s purchased quite a few in the past five years and shows them periodically at her site.
Check her out if you love literature. She is an inspiration.
Three writers couldn’t be more diverse in literary approach than Charles Dickens, Percy Shelley, and John Keats.
Each manages to use language and form to present ideas and content, but they differ in how they juggle the elements of their literary structure to create an experience. One puts form first, one stresses ideas, and one falls in the middle. Yet each of these writers makes an impact, and for me, one stands tallest.
Keats chooses every word carefully. Of all the Romantics, he is the most fastidious; every line must be perfectly placed. He works in a traditional rhyme scheme and is much more a classic poet than Shelley. He believes form is beautiful, like a classic painting, and feels that it can become a haven against suffering.
But while the structure of the poem is strategically tight, the poems are not locked up on one meaning; rather, they provide endless play, as in Ode on a Grecian Urn, a poem that is in keeping with the Romantics in that it’s not closed and fixed.
He’s not big and rambunctious like Shelley. He can mess with the reader’s head as effectively as Shelley, but he’s controlled.
He creates a peaceful experience; you know what to expect. He draws you in and works your mind subtly; the form is so fixed you don’t realize he’s penetrating your psyche. His works aren’t about society at large, but are centered in and around the individual. They’re meant to affect us independently as opposed to collectively.
In Ode on a Grecian Urn, he creates an island of individualized contemplation; transcendence is personal and intimately felt through language:
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O Attic shape! fair attitude! with brede |
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Of marble men and maidens overwrought, |
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With forest branches and the trodden weed; |
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Thou, silent form! dost tease us out of thought |
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As doth eternity: Cold Pastoral! |
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When old age shall this generation waste, |
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Thou shalt remain, in midst of other woe |
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Than ours, a friend to man, to whom thou say’st, |
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‘Beauty is truth, truth beauty,—that is all |
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Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know.’ |
Most people fear or fight death, but in Ode to a Nightingale, Keats suggests death is not terrible. The poem’s hypnotic quality makes us relax and accept death, then the pivotal switch makes us want to live. Through its form, his idea is made translatable. While it might appear Keats puts language and form at the forefront, in truth his ideas are as important as his structure; they’re just less thunderous in presentation than Shelley’s.
Dickens balances form and language with ideas and content. In Hard Times he sets the reader up like Shelley and asks, “What would you do?” in the opening of Chapter Ten:
In the hardest working part of Coketown; in the innermost fortifications of that ugly citadel, where Nature was as strongly bricked out as killing airs and gases were bricked in; at the heart of the labyrinth of narrow courts upon courts, and close streets upon streets, which had come into existence piecemeal, every piece in a violent hurry for some one man’s purpose, and the whole an unnatural family, shouldering, and trampling, and pressing one another to death; in the last close nook of this great exhausted receiver, where the chimneys, for want of air to make a draught, were built in an immense variety of stunted and crooked shapes, as though every house put out a sign of the kind of people who might be expected to be born in it; among the multitude of Coketown, generically called ‘the Hands,’ — a race who would have found mere favour with some people, if Providence had seen fit to make them only hands, or, like the lower creatures of the seashore, only hands and stomachs — lived a certain Stephen Blackpool, forty years of age.
The whole weight of this sentence rests on the poor, bent frame of Blackwell, just as the urban killing machine and the factory system rests like an indomitable weight on the backs of England’s workers.
Dickens is brilliantly monotonous in A Visit to Newgate, building up to a fantastic whiplash from the point of view of the visitor to the point of view of the prisoner; he uses our prejudice against us:
You’re scum, inhuman, irredeemable.
The reader thinks, “Dickens is saying it. It must be true.”
The reader is tempted to follow along, nodding in agreement.
Then suddenly Dickens rips the rug out, and the reader is the prisoner, experiencing the ticking clock. The long sentences are designed to work on us; they build and build, then they run us into a wall.
The experience while reading A Visit to Newgate is like being absorbed: the reader is swallowed through the front entrance, digested, and ultimately excreted out the back of the prison.
Dickens is a master of the long sentence. He pairs language and form to push the product, but his strength is also his weakness. His work is predictable; you know what you’re getting because he rolls it off the assembly line. He constructs sentences like an architect built them to convey the feel of the factory labor system he illustrates vividly.
He understands how society works because he’s a part of society, and there’s something formidable about that. He sincerely depicts a society that squashes and stultifies the individual. His ideas work in junction with the language and form; society is presented accurately because Dickens knows how to manipulate the language.
Percy Shelley is a screamer demanding of England’s lower classes, “Where is your rage?”
He’s impatient with the gentle approach and wants to shout his ideas through poetry and essay. He uses form to heighten the power in his language. He is revolutionary and philosophical. He poses questions about mental confusion and expects the reader to sort them out with him; he doesn’t offer neat little nuggets with an answer.
In Mont Blanc the mountain is a metaphor for God and the sublime. The poem is about attempting the summit, and sometimes the language is beautiful and serene; other times it’s terrifying and screams, “You want sublime? You can’t handle it!” A Defence of Poetry suggests we can change the world through literature and stresses philosophy, politics, and revolution, defending poetry’s form and language:
Hence the language of poets has ever affected a certain uniform and harmonious recurrence of sound, without which it were not poetry, and which is scarcely less dispensable to the communication of its influence, than the words themselves, without reference to that particular order. Hence the vanity of translation; it were as wise to cast a violet into a crucible that you might discover the former principle of its colour and odor, as to seek to transfuse from one language into another the creations of a poet.
Shelley desperately wants to believe literature can transform society because we’re deeply and profoundly social. England in Shelley’s time has become a prison of labor for the aristocrats. The lower classes are being degraded, and their language needs to be vitalized. Shelley’s ideas are not his only focus in literature; they’re part of an equation that considers language and form equally indispensable.
While his ideas are thunder and lightning, they are intricately linked with their placement within literature. Literature, while passionate, follows an artist’s recipe; without precise measuring, the cake won’t rise. Shelley knows this; he speaks it himself in his defense of literature and represents it in perfectly metered tasties like this one in Men of England:
“The seed ye sow, another reaps; the wealth ye find, another keeps; the robes ye weave, another wears; the arms ye forge, another bears.”
This work is so powerful in both language and content it becomes a hymn of the British labor movement. Shelleyis aware that, when paired with passion and revolution, rhyme and meter mirror the rhythm of actual imagination and can tumble out as ordered as the drumbeat in rain, the rise and fall of the sun, or the human heartbeat.
Each of these writers ultimately puts form, language, ideas, and content at the forefront. For me, Shelley is the superior writer because his passion is so profoundly tangible, yet his form is so musical. He creates a symphonic experience in Mont Blanc; you can’t help but feel something.
He stands in your face, strikes the cymbals and shouts, “Where is your rage?”
If I had lived in his time, if I had sat at his elbow and heard him speak, I’d have been profoundly moved by him.
I am profoundly moved by him.
The words are alive in his work two centuries later, and while Dickens and Keats are certainly exceptional in their own right, Shelley is the master of juggling his gear: he entices, he draws us in, and he shakes us until we can’t help but feel something, and he does it with every tool in his box: language, form, content, and ideas.
If self-reflection is the goal of these writers, if a revolution of the mind is their aim, then Shelley by far prevails.
Happy writing, one and all.
Corra McFeydon
