Noticing the Details - Barbara Jean Hicks

Until my new housemate moved in with me a month ago, I thought I was good at noticing the details. Now I wonder if I live mostly with my head in the clouds, so focused on my inner voices I'm oblivious to what's going on around me! "Did you see that?" is one of her most common questions. My most common response: "See what?"

Writers need to notice the details. It's important that we hone our observation skills so we can translate life into words, and those words can be translated back into life in our readers' minds. That's what makes fiction such a powerful form of communication--truer in some ways, I've often said, than nonfiction, because it conveys so much more than just the facts. The details we choose to express in our writing communicate more than mere images, too, visual or otherwise: emotions, states of mind, perspectives, philosophies of life.... Entire worlds.

My housemate is a great reminder to me to pay attention to the world. To all the little details.

It's interesting to look back at poetry I wrote at different times in my life and remember, from the details, what my world was like then. I'm going to be very brave here, in the interest of inspiring even one other writer to think about details and what they convey, and share three personal pieces--the first written in high school, the second in college, and the third fairly recently. Can you enter my world on each occasion?

Night Watch (high school)

the luminous sea,
alive with swells,

moon low and golden,
hovering...

barefoot in the sand
we run

until a lone gull cries--
strange, close:

we stop
and answer without words

as music of the night
wraps us in magic,

drowns us in the thunder
of hearts together

and the sea.

Bob's Big Boy: Newhall, California (college)

sitting droopy-eyed
while noise like 4th of July fireworks
explodes in my head

not hungry
but still ordering ham and swiss
on rye

fanning away cigarette smoke
and lecherous looks
from old men--

why do we always come here?

When you say (last year)

When you say
I’m aging gracefully
you mean

my waist
is not yet
fence-post
thick

my thighs
do not yet
spark like tinder
when I walk

my breasts
do not yet
hang like fruit
too heavy for the vine.

You mean

my neck
is not yet
Shar-pei
slouched

my face
is not yet
jig-sawed—
overmuch.

When you say
I’m aging gracefully
you mean
what eyes can see.

But when I look
at you,
I see what eyes
don't see.

It isn't easy,
aging gracefully.

Is it?

Comments

[D]

Barbara Jean,

As always, your gift of words is stunning! I love your work at all ages - and I think you are endlessly, timelessly, graceful!

Barbara B

[D]

Thanks, Tina and Barbara!

Barbara, you selected three examples that work really well together to illustrate your point (about state of mind, etc.). I've recopied your sentence about how "details... communicate... states of mind... etc." to think about it for every manuscript from now on, and make it better.

Caroline Hatton