Today�s entry is a response to a sort of conversation about blogging style that started in the comments on my post two days ago and continued at fairlywell�s place this morning. Fairlywell wonders at the description of her prose as elliptical � �are we talking egg-shaped or punctuation?�

I have used this term so long for a particular kind of writing tool � I hesitate to say trick, as fairlywell referred to it, because I think it sells her short � that I forget it�s probably not any kind of official term or standard practice. And the answer, for me anyway, lies in the duality of its meaning.

I did not originate the term. I first saw it used in this way when it was scrawled in red ink across a draft of a poem I wrote for a workshop years ago. It was intended as a criticism, but its reference point was not explained. I inferred: �elliptical� -- it�s leaving out details that might draw the readers in, it�s so round and smooth and closed that attempts made to crack it are thwarted. In short, too mysterious and personal.

But I did not agree with the assessment at the time (although in retrospect, there is too much left out between stanzas II and III). In fact, the poem in question wasn�t personal at all. It was a hoax. It was pure fiction calculated to raise the hackles of the particularly annoying group of writers in the workshop [and anyone who�s ever participated in a writer�s workshop knows that its success is a crapshoot based entirely on the group of writers present] who seemed to have completely forgotten that poetry could as easily be fictional as prose. I was irritated. We had been asked to write a poem influenced by a work of visual art. I had recently received a facsimile copy of Matisse�s Jazz (the very same one AJ was absorbing last week). This is what I wrote: Please keep in mind that I was 19 when I wrote it. Time is not kind to adolescent poetry. Hence the pretentious French title, although the first line of stanza IIII (which I remember choosing to write as IIII instead of IV to suit the text � ah, the obsessions of youth) is the title�s literal translation.

�Mes courbes ne sont pas folle� � Henri Matisse, Jazz.

I.
Do you remember
the long walk
out on the Main Line tracks
through the neighbor�s
vacant lot?
The smell of the sweet grass
grown too tall?
The sound of nervous cicadas?
The slow arch and return of
the summer willows?
It is a long time
since we were seventeen.

II.
Already I sleep
curled up in a
ball on my side of
the bed.
Then a stroll, but
now a six a.m.,
two and a half mile jog
in and out of grey monoliths.
From the bedroom window,
all I see are
long, grey, straight lines:
the tenement across the street,
the stone spire of a church, boarded up
the sidewalks far below
and above, the sky,
one grey flatness
that has swallowed you up.

III.
I listen to you
as I crack the eggs on the countertop
for your morning omelette.
grated cheese�
sliced onions.
Your rage pierces
in a thousand tiny points
sharper than the paring knife
I hold in my hand.
My silence, you say, is insane.
But my shattered picture, which
lies on the hearth
where you left it
in sharp triangles
tells me otherwise.

IIII.
My curves are not mad.
From day to day,
it is angles you see,
lines you understand.
You are in my memory
immortal
like the scar,
straight and purple,
you gave me for my
twenty-second birthday,
along with a silver-edged picture frame
with glass like ice.

* * * * *
When I use the term elliptical, I tend to be more precise about it than the person who applied it to this poem, although in some ways this poem has defined its meaning for me, even as it is a pretty poor example of what I�m talking about. The writing I call �elliptical� involves a sort of puzzle that derives from the substitution of seemingly inconsequential details for key information. What�s left is the outline of a real story � I think of a picture I once saw of a page full of words with a man-shaped hole in the middle. From a literary standpoint, the thing I find attractive about the technique is that it is often an interesting way to get at both a story and a character that might be at odds with one another, a character, for example, who doesn�t really want to (or cannot) admit what�s going on.

It is also, in many respects, the perfect style for a blog for someone like me or fairlywell or lass or any number of others. Many of us are intensely private people and if met for the first time in person are unlikely to reveal much. And yet, given the highly public forum for our personal writing, we also like to talk about ourselves, under the cloak and dagger of usernames and the occasional semi-fiction. So sometimes the way to handle it is to leave out or rearrange key ingredients but leave a few signposts behind. For me, at least, it reflects my ambiguity about writing a blog � I want people to figure it out, and at the same time, I don�t want them to figure it out. I like the word elliptical, because it reflects both the leaving out of information and also the inscrutability of the writing to which I aspire � a perfect smooth oval with no cracks in it.

9 people said it like they meant it