To read an excerpt from the book, please click on the following link:

ashaveilbook.blogspot.com

An excerpt from The Pleasure Palace, my romantic comedy, can be found here:



Sunday, March 02, 2014

He-LO

One of my relatives just called me and asked if my Baron Le Samedi poem was about my dad!  Well, at least they follow my blog!  How 'bout visiting me once in awhile, eh?  I'll make you some good food.  I promise...I do miss my family a lot.

At any rate, the writing is not about anyone in particular, unless my dad suddenly turned into Le Baron.  I thought it was an interesting conceit/extended metaphor.  Good God. 

When I have a "you" in a poem, it is either a general "you" with no true direction at anyone--unless it's me, referred to in the third person (in fact, I visualized myself as Le Baron's target in that one as I could not get into Le Baron's...well, he has no skin, as he's a skeleton dude, but maybe his bones).

Oh, well....I am not altogether inexperienced at people wondering if a poem or a story, or a character, are them.  It is so rare for me to really do such a thing that I have told people when I want to base a character on them, and in both those cases, the person was the hero/good guy.

I actually have an imagination, dear relative (whom I do love, but jeez--the Thought Police belongs in 1984), and I can find better things to suit Dad than a Haitian lwa who is a skeleton in sunglasses, drinking "Haitian tear gas" (rum with chili pepper infused in it)!  Though I must say, Dad looks great in a tux...and so does Baron Samedi.

And good writing, powerful writing, does stir things up...that is why it has the potential to change the world, to make people think.  People took Jonathan Swift at his word, after all, when he wrote "A Modest Proposal"--they thought he was a cannibal.  For real.

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