Table of Contents You may submit any of your writing to be critiqued by a panel of peer critics by emailing it to littleal87@aol.com with "To Critique" in the subject line. Critiques provided by a panel of peer editors: Even if you have previously done so, please send your DOB/gender/location to littleal87@aol.com because the file containing the birthdays was wiped clear. This helps to create a picture of the demographics of the club and your birthday will be featured in the newsletter! Thank you very much for participating.
The Write Stories
The Write Poetry
Critique of the Month
Learn From the Masters
The Write "Stuff"
THE WRITE STORIES
Prologue
By Stupot
She stood on the cliff top, listening. She could hear nothing but the
gentle rustle of the trees behind her and the soft waves calmly washing the
rocks below. Yet something told her the men were near. That inner feeling
again. Like someone was watching her.
"Why won’t they leave me alone? I told them it was an accident. I didn’t
mean to kill all those boys. They shouldn’t have made me angry; they
shouldn’t have tried to rape me."
She turned to see if her pursuers had caught up with her yet. They hadn’t.
It worked. "Am I finally learning to control my gift?" She had tried to use
her will to slow the men down while she sped on outpacing them, but she had
run straight for this cliff and was now trapped. All she could do was wait.
Then, with a cold rush to the pit of her stomach, she felt the men exit the
forest. Without looking back she made for the north, running with the cliff
edge on her right hand side and the forest to the left.
She had been running for what seemed like ages, but was probably more a
matter of minutes, when she heard a piercing screech from behind a large
rock up ahead. She didn’t need to look to know that that was no ordinary
animal. The thing then leapt out from its shelter and landed about 20 yards
in front of her in front of her, causing her to stop in her tracks. She was
fully aware of the men behind her gaining ground, but she did not want to
fool around with this beast, as it was obviously a conjuration of some dark
power. The huge, cat-like monster again roared its primal scream and the
girl suddenly felt herself compelled to walk towards it.
"He’s just a little pussycat," said a voice inside her head, "go; play with
him."
She was just about to take one more step, when shouting from behind her
broke her trance. She turned to see the black-clad figures running towards
her, many holding daggers and swords, a few wielding longbows.
“Attack!” Shouted one man wearing red turban. And at that moment, a torrent
of arrows and rocks were launched into the air, while the men with
short-range weapons charged at her. And the giant cat-beast roared before
leaping towards her. She dropped to the floor and began to sob.
"So this is it, then? This is how I must die? All I wanted was a friend,
someone with whom I could share my deepest thoughts, or someone to teach me
to control my gift."
She paused... and then...
“WHYYYYYY?!!!” She shouted, and the whole world shook beneath her. The men
stopped in mid-charge, and the archers ceased firing. The cliff began to
crumble and the girl realized that, again, she was to blame for this
imminent disaster. Men scrambled towards the trees, and those who didn’t
make it fell into the cracks in the earth and died on their way to the rocks
below.
She shouted again, this time a raw rage that created a giant tear to split
the heavens apart. A black light poured out of the gap, engulfing the entire
scene. The huge cat exploded in a cloud of grey dust and the men began
screaming as their heads were forced from their shoulders by a black wind,
leaving blood, brain and human skull all over the trees and the
still-crumbling cliff top.
The cliff fell away from beneath the feet of the girl, but still she stood,
suspended in mid-air, grinning at the events surrounding her. Then her grin
widened, and she softly giggled to herself, at first.
"Hehehe, OK, I'll stop now", she said to herself, and the hole in the sky
began to suck the wind back in and the black light was slowly replaced again
by daylight. And as she surveyed the carnage of the past few minutes, the
girl thought she could still hear the screams of the dead men as their souls
were sucked into the hole in the sky.
THE WRITE POETRY
Title: Dying Child
[lis@studentbylines.com]
She screamed and cried,
In so much pain,
Yet she did it all to remove it,
Empty she felt,
Once her child of twenty-six weeks is born,
She too shocked,
To cradle the dying child in her arms,
The nurse did it for her,
Tears streaming down his face,
Rocking the too-small child,
Crooning to it
About the sunlight outside,
The dew-dropped leaves,
And the laughter of the birds,
Chocking, burbling, the child tries
To cry, yet it cannot,
For no lungs had been developed,
Its heart beating under
The blue spider veins
In such cruel futility.
The mother only
Thinks of the ripped condom,
And heated passion taken too far,
She only a child herself
Of 14 summers and winters,
She too naive to comprehend
The life she had brought into the world,
Was something precious,
She poisoned it,
Heeding the urgent whispered instructions
Of her accessories to murder
They themselves female
And capable of so much,
But mentally too utterly
Stupid to know
What they had wrought
The nurse himself, so new
To the addictive highs of
Delivery,
Breaks apart under the suffering of
Such a small human
He, humming to the child,
Tears streaking his cheeks
For how did this child deserve this?
The weak hand clutches at his pin,
Eight tiny fingers, the skin so
Smooth and warm,
Welcoming death, the child
Curls up against the only
Protective body it knew during
Its short life.
A last pitiful choke,
And the child had given in,
To what the mother had wanted
For so long,
For the thing to disappear
To banish it from her mind
So she could live without the guilt.
The nurse’s heart cracked, yet
It strengthened anew at the
Twisted thought
That this child, mother,
Murderer,
Would live with her decision
For all time, the thought
Of a small child,
Dying, curled up
Against the chest of another.
CRITIQUE OF THE MONTH
Therissa
Allison, high school senior
Eternal Battle Cry
[ashie_chic@Girlfriend.com.au]
I can see history's blood-stained pages,
Flashing before me, and its grotesque stages.
The grounds of war filled with souls, (I don’t know if you need a comma here) haunted,
Past words spoken, demanding warriors of nations not to be daunted, (that's a mouthful. maybe you can trim it down a bit)
The conflict for peace not yet begotten, (Archaic word usage. You're stretching.)
Though those fallen for the cause are not forgotten,
This the eternal battle cry,
Though the end for everyone is nigh (Really? 'Nigh.' So you're seriously using this word in a 21st Century poem? I think you may be stretching for the rhyme a bit.),
We march on all our heads held high,
This is our bid goodbye.
(Why is it goodbye? Further explain. Are you writing about martrydom? I'm having a hard time really getting the tone of the poem. That may very well be my short-coming, but there are questions left. But beside the content, I have a hard time digesting the rhyme scheme. This makes whatever you're writing about, no matter how profound, slippery. Perhaps you feel secure with the rhyming, but it's time to take a few risks. Go out there and be scared, that's the key to great art.)
I liked this piece. It makes me think of what has been going on lately and with past wars in general.
This poem sounds preachy and historical. Where's the emotion? It sounds like you're making grand generalizations and statements but there's no real character to it, nothing to connect to on a personal level. Yes, the soldiers are forlorn, but give my morbid mind something to latch on to. I want to be able to see it in my mind--tell me about the pus-drenched rag stuffed into a fallen comrade's wound. Okay, so maybe I'm gross, but don't just say things like, "History's grotesque stages."
LEARN FROM THE MASTERS
"American novelist and short story writer. Salinger published one novel and several short story collections between 1948-59. His best-known work is THE CATCHER IN THE RYE (1951), a story about a rebellious teenage schoolboy and his quixotic experiences in New York.
"What really knocks me out is a book that, when you're all done reading it, you wish the author that wrote it was a terrific friend of yours and you could call him up on the phone whenever you felt like it. That doesn't happen much, though." (Holden Caulfied in The Catcher in the Rye)
J.D. Salinger was born and grew up in the fashionable apartment district of Manhattan, New York. He was the son of a prosperous Jewish importer of Kosher cheese and his Scotch-Irish wife. In his childhood the young Jerome was called Sonny. The family had a beautiful apartment on Park Avenue. After restless studies in prep schools, he was sent to Valley Forge Military Academy (1934-36), which he attended briefly. His friends from this period remember his sarcastic wit. In 1937 when he was eighteen and nineteen, Salinger spent five months in Europe. From 1937 to 1938 he studied at Ursinus College and New York University. He fell in love with Oona O'Neill, wrote her letters almost daily, and was later shocked when she married Charles Chaplin, who was much older than she. In 1939 Salinger took a class in short story writing at Columbia University under Whit Burnett, founder-editor of the Story Magazine. During World War II he was drafted into the infantry and was involved in the invasion of Normandy. Salinger's comrades considered him very brave, a genuine hero. During the first months in Europe Salinger managed to write stories and in Paris meet Ernest Hemingway. He was also involved in one of the bloodiest episodes of the war in Hürtgenwald, a useless battle, where he witnessed the horrors of war...
Salinger's first novel, The Catcher in the Rye, became immediately a Book-of-the-Month Club selection and won huge international acclaim. It sells still some 250 000 copies annually. Salinger did not do much to help publicity, and asked that his photograph should not be used in connection with the book. The first reviews of the work were mixed, although most critics considered it brilliant. The novel took its title from a line by Robert Burns, in which the protagonist Holden Caulfied misquoting it sees himself as a 'catcher in the rye' who must keep the world's children from falling off 'some crazy cliff'. The story is written in a monologue and in lively slang. It tells of the 16-year old restless Caulfield - as Salinger was in his youth - who runs away from school during his Christmas break to New York to find himself and lose his virginity. He spends an evening going to nightclubs, has an unsuccessful encounter with a prostitute, and the next day meets an old girlfriend. After getting drunk he sneaks home. Holden's former schoolteacher makes homosexual advances to him. He meets his sister to tell her that he is leaving home and has a nervous breakdown. The humor of the novel places it in the tradition of Mark Twain's classical works, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn and The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, but its world-view is more disillusioned. Holden describes everything as 'phoney' and is constantly in search of sincerity. He represents the early hero of adolescent angst."
--http://www.kirjasto.sci.fi/salinger.htm
To learn more about J.D. Salinger:
http://www.levity.com/corduroy/salinger.htm
http://www.morrill.org/books/salbio.shtml
http://www.bbc.co.uk/arts/books/author/salinger/
http://www.litkicks.com/BeatPages/page.jsp?what=JDSalinger
SPECIAL BIRTHDAY ANNOUNCEMENT
May 14, 1985 mrafuls@princeton.edu
Happy Birthday!
