The views expressed in the Writer-in-Residence blogs are those held by the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of Open Book: Toronto.
13 UNASSAILABLE REASONS TO RESIST CLOSURE IN YOUR POETRY AND FICTION
Submitted by Stuart Ross on August 22, 2016 - 3:06pm
A very smart reviewer of my new book of poems, A Sparrow Came Down Resplendent, recently expressed perplexedness at my resistance to closure. I shall, herein, endeavour to defend my stance, in the fine tradition of Sir Philip Sidney. Sir Philip knew his shmoos.
(I admit that I am hesitant to share these startling writing tips, because I don't really want the competition. I've already bought my ticket to Stockholm.)
1. Nothing much ever ends tidily in life. Threads dangle, quivering in the breeze.
2. Cleverness may not kill you, but it can kill your writing. Even boringness rules over cleverness when it comes to endings.
3. The reader will walk into a wall, instead of having the more pleasurable experience of getting lost in a swamp or floating off into space clutching a paperback novel with the covers and title pages torn off and no running heads.
4. Enigmas are sublime. Answers are bureaucratic.
5. The writing is more important than the plot. What’s a plot, anyway? Really, what’s a plot? I don’t even know what a plot is. Sad!
6. If nothing comes next, what then?
7. The absence of satisfaction can be the most satisfying phenomenon.
8. Disjunction, in a very real sense, makes the world go round, at whatever speed, on its conceptual axis bicycle my lobster.
9. Destroy capitalism. Destroy patriarchy.
10. Nothing is unassailable. What are you talking about?
11. What are you talking about?
12. A gun introduced in Act I no longer exists in Act III, just as the winner of a 50-metre race between shmoos wouldn’t have been born when the race began.
13. The horizon is always far off. (“You lie,” he cried, / And ran on.)
