Scenes I Want To Write Poem by gershon hepner

Novelists choose scenes they write,
implying ones they don’t. My life
has scenes that give me great delight,
and don’t call for the censor’s knife
or press a button called delete,
but those that do aren’t ones designed
to keep my readers in their seat,
so in this poem I’m inclined
to sing the song of each defeat,
and write the saga of my days
and, lacking empathy, embroider
their fragments, helping you appraise
the value of your “Schadenfreude”.
No Augustinian Confession
is what I’m aiming to produce,
I seek the freedom now to freshen
my memory, while shaking loose
the jackets that are strait and tight,
and limit movements of the mind
that keeps defeats far out of sight,
when to them I feel quite resigned.


In the LA Times, Frazier Moore writes about Andrew Davies, the adapter of Jane Austen novels for Masterpiece Theater (“The sexy side of Jane Austen”) :

The Welsh-born former academic, who didn't turn to full-time writing until he was 50, has also written children's books, novels and original screenplays. But during a recent interview, he presents himself as a snowy-haired, pink-faced fireplug of erudition and good cheer. He makes no secret he's delighted to find himself in high demand. 'I have quite a little queue of things waiting to do next, ' he says. 'Sometimes it makes me feel a little guilty that I don't seem to be doing any original work these days, ' he adds with no sign of guilt. 'All my creativity seems to go into freshening up those great works.'

'Freshening' is one word for it. But Davies has become noted for literary accomplishment in his own right. He commands a level of respect and even star value that translate into drawing power for the programs he's associated with - and can even jolt sales of the books that serve as his source material. His writing breakthrough, he says, was 'Pride and Prejudice, ' where viewers recognized 'we were clearly taking an attitude, and they started thinking, 'Yes, he's not just copying it out. He's taking a view on a book and making a statement.' '

Davies relishes driving home the idea that a long-ago author's message is relevant to the modern audience, while also taking a contrary tack from the traditional interpretation of the book. This calls for a certain measure of invention on his part. 'Quite often I'll find that I'm writing scenes that aren't exactly in the book, ' he says. 'All these novelists choose the scenes that they're going to write, and imply the scenes that they don't write - and quite often I think the scenes they don't write are the scenes I want to see.'


1/30/08