A student in class yesterday said that she didn't think her writing was "literary" enough to submit to literary magazines. (And this is a student who has a wonderful essay in Victoria Zackheim's upcoming new anthology, Exit Laughing.) So I asked her what she thought literary meant and she said: Poetic, beautiful writing, you know, literary.
I think a lot of bad writing has come from the notion of "literary" and "poetic" (and has stopped a lot of people from writing in the first place). Good writing is both simple and deep. It's not fancy, it doesn't have poetic frou-frou with a lot of adjectives and adverbs. But good writing, true literary writing, goes under the surface of things. It reaches deep into the writer's life and experience and gives something - wisdom, knowledge, laughter - to the reader.
I told my student, who writes very funny, deep, serious essays to send her work out to literary magazines immediately.
Thank you for this fine post. From a related angle, I cringe when students fixate on "literary polish" rather than the heart of the story, especially in lifestories and memoir!
Posted by: Sharon Lippincott | May 12, 2012 at 07:57 AM
People probably assume that "literary" means obscure, hard to understand writing. (Michael Ondaatje's work springs to mind---and I say this fondly as I enjoy his novels and his memoir.)
Works I love most include thinking and ideas but the thinking is rooted in the body, in the world of physical experience.
I love the poems of Robert Hass because I think his poems achieve this. His "Twentieth Century Pleasures," a book of literary criticism also achieves this marriage of body and mind in my opinion.
Posted by: Lisa Willinger | May 21, 2012 at 05:45 PM
nice post! :)
Thanks Barbara
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