Comments:

Smed - 2006-06-13 11:30:40
You know, it is funny though that I am NOT private and am pretty open and honest and gregarious, etc. But you probably would have guessed by reading me, eh? However, this is a great outlet, because I feel so comfortable with almost everyone I read because I think I KNOW them! And I do.
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elgan - 2006-06-13 13:30:01
I actually like that poem. I do not find it elliptical at all, but maybe that's because I have no problem inferring the left-out information that was the reason for that comment in the first place.

As for openness in a public blog, if one is not an open person, I feel one has no reason to blog on the internet. You expose yourself to the scrutiny of strangers, and unless you are going to write total fiction all the time, people are going to put the puzzle pieces together and come up with a composite of how they perceive you.

I think maybe I should head over to Smed's place. I don't know him at all, but I think I want to.
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Harriet - 2006-06-13 14:21:11
I think there are many different ways to approach blogging and yes, a desire to reveal some aspect of oneself is pretty much a necessity--I doubt if anyone without some desire to talk would choose this particular medium. And while I'm pretty open about the definition of blogging, I think to write a completely fictional blog without calling attention to its fictitiousness is disingenous in the extreme. If I had been reading a blog for a while that turned out to be fiction, I would be angry at being misled. But for some of us, I think, the medium is attractive precisely because there is at least a pretense of anonymity (and maybe ONLY a pretense), that we can control the reveal in a way that is much more difficult in real life. It's not that I'm not an open person in real life -- I am scrupulously honest, I don't hide things and I don't lie about them. But in real life, I am much slower to reveal information about myself unless directly interrogated. If I were to be that cagey here, I would have nothing to write about. Moreover, as Smed mentioned, I just feel more comfortable here sometimes. So the reveal is not so scary. Of course, I haven't yet encountered some of the more judgmental elements out there. Perhaps if I had, I would feel differently. I think the use of what I'm calling elliptical prose stems in part from conflicting desires to both hide and reveal, but if I didn't want to reveal, I certainly wouldn't be here in a public forum. As for the poem, thank you. I think the comments on the poem made me realize that I liked different kinds of poems than the director of that particular workshop and I stopped paying so much attention. But in the end, I do agree that there's something missing in the middle. The shift in the third stanza feels abrupt. There is definitely such a thing as too elliptical.
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elgan - 2006-06-13 14:48:15
I think we are confusing the term elliptical with cryptic. I'm glad you haven't encountered the judgmental elements out there, they don't tend to be kind, or polite, or use good grammar and spelling, which kind of makes you wonder how they expect to be taken seriously.
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Harriet - 2006-06-13 16:59:56
Perhaps. Although I generally think of cryptic as being willfully mysterious, the creation of a persona. That's not really what I'm talking about with elliptical, which I think of as being honest but not giving it all away. Just as a citation that makes use of an ellipsis calls attention to the fact that something is missing. It's not trying to create an atmosphere as much as it's making use of the bare essentials and leaving out other things while at the same time calling attention to their absence. But perhaps it's just splitting hairs.
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Julia - 2006-06-13 19:40:50
Harriet, I think you and I have the same idea about elliptical. I took it as a compliment, actually, since that was pretty much what I was going for. Feeling like you're peering through a fog, or back in time. However, I have to say, I hate hate hate it when people use their public weblogs to carry on coded conversations no one understands. That's one reason I rend not to care who reads fairlywell - I know there's an audience, but I don't want to be so conscious of it that only one or two people have a clue what I'm talking about.
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Harriet - 2006-06-13 20:24:30
I totally agree, Julia. I think you put your finger on the difference between elliptical and cryptic. It may not be a real difference in definition, but my own interpretation, but cryptic has that kind of negative connotation to me -- exclusive, manipulative. Whereas elliptical is asking the audience to get involved, to interpret rather than just read. But I do think there's a fine line between the two sometimes. As there is with any stylized writing, actually.
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Lass - 2006-06-13 21:08:47
I use my blog for all sorts of stuff - from the factual (and dull) reporting of my life, snippets from works in progress and yes, the elliptical or vague (or cryptic) entries that sometimes combine elements of both. Recently, though, I've been writing a lot elsewhere and so the blog has become somewhat of a chore.
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Smed - 2006-06-14 13:40:52
And then there's today for me, where I just become the silly.
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