Dear WriteByNighter,
Don't forget to go see Spoiler Alert, which is getting stellar reviews and opens nationwide Friday!
It's based on a memoir of the same title (Simon & Schuster), written by journalist Michael Ausiello, who worked on it in book coaching with me. Along the way we laughed and cried, a lot, which is exactly what the film will make you do.
Written by Dan Savage (of Savage Love fame) & David Marshall Grant, and directed by Michael Showalter (The
Big Sick), the movie stars Jim Parsons as Michael and Ben Aldridge as Kit, with Kit's mother played by -- to the wild delight of my own mother -- Sally Field.
It's not about Christmas, but it's definitely Christmasy. (And very
Smurftastic.) So this is a great time of year to go see a movie that also offers a little slice of WriteByNight.
Speaking of Christmas, any visit to your local grocery store will prove this is definitely the time of year for hokey music. Which calls to mind one of my favorite long-running debates:
Are song lyrics poetry?
In my limited experience, most lyricists tend to say yes.
Most poets?
Well, remind a poet that Bob Dylan won a Nobel for literature and see how he/she responds.
It's probably more nuanced than a yes/no answer. Like, maybe song lyrics are poetry, but tend to be poor-quality poetry? Or they're poetry, but it's unfair to judge them without the accompanying
music?
Let's look at one of my favorite December songs:
"If we make it through
December
Everything's gonna be all right, I know,
It's the coldest time of winter,
And I shiver when I see the falling snow."
Well, OK. Yeah, December is cold, and so is snow. If that's poetry, it ain't great. Drop those lines into the New Yorker and you might begin to question Kevin Young's sanity.
But add the melody & Haggard's weary, gruff baritone to this story about a laid-off factory worker, and you can make the argument it's poetry. Or elicits the response poetry is often meant to draw from the reader.
How about this?
"The smell of hospitals in winter
And the feeling that it's all a lot of oysters, but no pearls
All at once, you look across a crowded room
To see the way that light attaches to a girl."
If I read that in the
New Yorker rather than in some Counting Crows liner notes, I wouldn't question Kevin Young's sanity. His judgment, maybe. I might wonder if he's prioritizing his own writing over his work at the mag. (And I'd hope he is!)
Where
am I going with this? Well, nowhere, really. I've headed out onto the winter ice with no water wings.
So let's do this...
