All fiction becomes autobiographical when the author has true talent.
quote by Jeanne Moreau
Submitted by Veronica Serbanoiu
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I think I had actually served my apprenticeship as a writer of fiction by writing all those songs. I had already been through phases of autobiographical or experimental stuff.
quote by Kazuo Ishiguro
Submitted by Lucian Velea
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The reason that fiction is more interesting than any other form of literature, to those who really like to study people, is that in fiction the author can really tell the truth without humiliating himself.
Sonnet- Talents
Talent is something that none can erase;
It is always a God-given rich gift;
If you can nurture and become an ace,
None can prevent God's impending huge lift.
Talent is something that's hidden in you;
Within you search and 'twill come out quite true;
God rewards this way for righteousness too,
Never to many but to people few.
Talent is something all must bring it out,
To show the world that God is pleased with us;
It is God's blessing, without any doubt;
Then labour and nurture without great fuss.
Talent if nurtured, gives us happiness;
'Tis not something to keep in much harness.
poem by John Celes
Submitted by Poetry Lover
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Man Who Mistook His Mistress For A Violin
The man who mistook his mistress for a violin
is the subject of a book by J. M. Coetzee.
Mistaking music for a mistress is a sin
more serious that to eat bread without saying motsi.
When sex becomes a contest in which you subject
erotic will to your opponent who’s a wench,
don’t treat her like a piece of bread and don’t object
if she declares she is not ready yet to bensch.
Motsi is the Hebrew name of a piece of bread a Jew may not eat before saying a blessing, hamotsi lehem min ha’arets, meaning “He who brings forth bread from the earth.” Bensch means “bless, ” and in the context of eating bread it refers to the blessing that in Hebrew is called birkat hamazon, meaning “the blessing for food.” Coetzee’s description of himself as “the man who mistook his mistress for a violin” is clearly an allusion to Oliver Sacks’s story of the man with visual agnosia who mistook his wife for a hat.
The poem was in part inspired by Tim Parks’s review of J. M. Coetzee’s “Summertime: A Fiction, ” a novel that may or may not be autobiographical (“The Education of ‘John Coetzee, ’” NYR (February 11,2010) :
Following Boyhood (1997) and Youth (2002) , Summertime concludes J.M. Coetzee's autobiographical trilogy. It is a teasing and surprisingly funny book, at once as elaborately elusive and determinedly confessional as ever autobiography could be. If Boyhood and Youth were remarkable for Coetzee's use of the third person (the author declining to identify with his younger self) and the present tense (a narrative device more commonly associated with fiction than memoir) , Summertime takes both distancing and novelizing a step further. Despite our seeing Coetzee's name on the cover and hence assuming the author alive and well, we are soon asked to believe that he is now dead, the book being made up of five interviews conducted by an anonymous biographer who is speaking to people he presumes were important to the writer during the years 1972–1975.
Coetzee writes about the affair he has, possibly fact, possibly fiction, with a psychotherapist called Julia:
John, she says, was actually “a minor character” in a drama played out between herself and her husband. While the latter was traveling, the lovers enjoyed an “erotic entanglement” in the marital bed. Yet John was peripheral to her life; at the one moment when she was ready to leave her husband and he could have become a major player, he “took fright” and snuck out of the hotel where she was sleeping….Certainly there’s comedy to be had in the description of this willfully unassertive man partnering a woman who sees sex “as a contest, a variety of wrestling in which you do you best to subject your opponent to your erotic will.” “He was not in my league, ” Julia complains. When John tries to persuade her to moderate her lovemaking to fir the slow movement of a Schubert string quintet, the better to “re-experience” the sexual feelings of a bygone age, Julia shows him the door. “The man who mistook his mistress for a violin, ” she comments.
1/30/10
poem by Gershon Hepner
Submitted by Poetry Lover
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Misaking A Mistress For A Violin
MISTAKING A MISTRESS FOR A VIOLIN
The man who mistook his mistress for a violin
is the subject of a book by J. M. Coetzee.
Mistaking music for a mistress is a sin
more serious than to eat bread without saying motsi.
When sex becomes a contest in which you subject
erotic will to your opponent, wife or wench,
don’t treat her like a piece of bread, and don’t object
if she declares she is not ready yet to bensch.
Motsi is the Hebrew name of a piece of bread a Jew may not eat before saying a blessing, hamotsi lehem min ha’arets, meaning “He who brings forth bread from the earth.” Bensch means “bless, ” and in the context of eating bread it refers to the blessing that in Hebrew is called birkat hamazon, meaning “the blessing for food.” Coetzee’s description of himself as “the man who mistook his mistress for a violin” is clearly an allusion to Oliver Sacks’s story of the man with visual agnosia who mistook his wife for a hat.
The poem was in part inspired by Tim Parks’s review of J. M. Coetzee’s “Summertime: A Fiction, ” a novel that may or may not be autobiographical (“The Education of ‘John Coetzee, ’” NYR (February 11,2010) :
Following Boyhood (1997) and Youth (2002) , Summertime concludes J.M. Coetzee's autobiographical trilogy. It is a teasing and surprisingly funny book, at once as elaborately elusive and determinedly confessional as ever autobiography could be. If Boyhood and Youth were remarkable for Coetzee's use of the third person (the author declining to identify with his younger self) and the present tense (a narrative device more commonly associated with fiction than memoir) , Summertime takes both distancing and novelizing a step further. Despite our seeing Coetzee's name on the cover and hence assuming the author alive and well, we are soon asked to believe that he is now dead, the book being made up of five interviews conducted by an anonymous biographer who is speaking to people he presumes were important to the writer during the years 1972–1975.
Coetzee writes about the affair he has, possibly fact, possibly fiction, with a psychotherapist called Julia:
John, she says, was actually “a minor character” in a drama played out between herself and her husband. While the latter was traveling, the lovers enjoyed an “erotic entanglement” in the marital bed. Yet John was peripheral to her life; at the one moment when she was ready to leave her husband and he could have become a major player, he “took fright” and snuck out of the hotel where she was sleeping….Certainly there’s comedy to be had in the description of this willfully unassertive man partnering a woman who sees sex “as a contest, a variety of wrestling in which you do you best to subject your opponent to your erotic will.” “He was not in my league, ” Julia complains. When John tries to persuade her to moderate her lovemaking to fir the slow movement of a Schubert string quintet, the better to “re-experience” the sexual feelings of a bygone age, Julia shows him the door. “The man who mistook his mistress for a violin, ” she comments.
1/30/10
poem by Gershon Hepner
Submitted by Poetry Lover
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Hidden Talent
Written by gerry beckley, 1998
Found on human nature.
Just like a person from another world
My eyes can see inside you, little girl
I see things that you dont want to see
I see things youre trying to hide from me
Im just trying to make you understand
All the ways you can affect this man
From the moment that you came in touch
With the power there to burn so much
Youve got hidden talent (yeah)
I bet youre gonna find some hidden talent, oh
You know your past is whats been bugging you
If youre ready girl ... do what you gotta do
Look for your life between the lines
Bad directions and poor designs
Youve got hidden talent (hidden talent, yeah)
I bet youre gonna find some hidden talent, oh
Hidden talent (hidden talent, yeah)
Check it out you ... got it, hidden talent, oh
With the advantage of perspective i
See theres more to you than meets the eye
But now the time must come to spread your wings and fly
Yeah (hidden talent) yeah
Hidden talent (hidden talent, yeah)
I bet youre gonna find some hidden talent, oh
Hidden talent (hidden talent, yeah)
Check it out ... you got it, hidden talent, oh
Hidden talent (hidden talent, yeah)
Affair without warning
Hidden talent, mmm (mmm)
Hidden talent (hidden talent, yeah)
I bet youre gonna find some hidden talent, oh
(fade)
song performed by by America
Submitted by Lucian Velea
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Why A Genius Is So Rare?
Why a genius is so rare?
Because it’s needed time and luck for that person to find his true talent
It is needed chance and hard work to explore his hidden talent
It is needed good and understanding to accept his unique talent
poem by Maria Sudibyo
Submitted by Poetry Lover
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Some people just don't seem to understand the concept of fiction. It is fiction; it ain't true, folks.
quote by Laurell K. Hamilton
Submitted by Lucian Velea
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Good fiction must be entertaining, but what makes fiction special - and True - is that the realness of a novel allows it to carry a larger message.
quote by Jerry B. Jenkins
Submitted by Lucian Velea
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I believe that, like most writers, my personality comes through in the fiction. So in that respect my writing can't be like any other author's really.
The real issue is not talent as an independent element, but talent in relationship to will, desire, and persistence. Talent without these things vanishes and even modest talent with those characteristics grows.
quote by Milton Glaser
Submitted by Lucian Velea
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There are two kinds of talent, man-made talent and God-given talent. With man-made talent you have to work very hard. With God-given talent, you just touch it up once in a while.
quote by Pearl Bailey
Submitted by Lucian Velea
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They who lack talent expect things to happen without effort. They ascribe failure to a lack of inspiration or ability, or to misfortune, rather than to insufficient application. At the core of every true talent there is an awareness of the difficulties inherent in any achievement, and the confidence that by persistence and patience something worthwhile will be realized. Thus talent is a species of vigor.
quote by Eric Hoffer
Submitted by Lucian Velea
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The first thing they were told was how to hone their talent. Then they were told how to market their talent, discipline their talent and type their talent. And then they were told they might as well forget about talent.
quote by Esther B. Fein
Submitted by Lucian Velea
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There is an element of autobiography in all fiction in that pain or distress, or pleasure, is based on the author's own. But in my case that is as far as it goes.
quote by William Trevor
Submitted by Lucian Velea
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There are two kinds of talents, man-made talent and God-given talent. With man-made talent you have to work very hard. With God-given talent, you just touch it up once in a while.
quote by Pearl Bailey
Submitted by Lucian Velea
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I Am Gifted
I am gifted,
In so many ways,
Each second, Each hour,
In smart learning days.
Gifted isn't smart,
But it can be,
That's true,
It could mean a great talent,
By me and by you!
I share my ideas,
I learn in my place,
Learn to recognize,
Each different face.
I know right from wrong,
I'm good at this too,
But some things are blank,
To me but not you.
I use my talent,
To help others too,
It might mean more hours,
In high school, it's true!
Fictional
everything i write comes back to me
like they are real
in flesh and blood and friends write
how come
how is it that we are there in your poems
when they are supposedly
some works of a writer
imaginary and fictional
i have no answer
i write about love and broken hearts
and another friend
emails if i am alright
is there anything she can do to help?
but i say again
this is not me this has nothing to do with me
this is fiction
and she does not believe me
she says,
there you are trying to lie again
when blood runs surging like some pulse
of a dying man wanting to be alive
in your poetry,
i have no answer
the poems are works of fiction
it is not me it is about him and her and them
she shrugs off her shoulders
and reads again about the old church where
she once knelt and prayed
there was this girl who fell in love
and whose heart was
beautifully torn to pieces
she says she is her
the poem is true
and there was this boy
who was with her praying
who, when he became a man
broke her heart
she says it is you it is you
the poem is true,
the poems are true
who will ever believe me now?
i have always lied all along
count it from the first poem
when i said about
it and i said it was
it is
all about nothing and
it will always be about nothing
but fiction, nothing personal, but it can be also painful and lingering.....
poem by Ric S. Bastasa
Submitted by Poetry Lover
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True stories, autobiographical stories, like some novels, begin long ago, before the acts in the account, before the birth of some of the people in the tale.
quote by Harold Brodkey
Submitted by Lucian Velea
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Science Fiction Woman
She was my science fiction woman,
I was her science fiction man,
Yet our love was no fiction
In our science fiction land.
I wore my science fiction spacesuit,
She wore a spacesuit just like mine,
While we were floating together
In our science fiction minds.
She said her name was Taylor Trippy-
A flower child light years beyond-
She was a science fiction hippy-
A spacey and vivacious blonde.
She told me of our global warming,
Greenhouse gases, acid rain,
She told me everything I know
About the structure of the brain.
So we cruised through constellations
In our science fiction ship,
Transcending time and generations-
Forever free, forever hip.
She came from some unknown planet
In some uncharted galaxy,
And we were both kindred souls
In our cosmic fantasy.
And I don't know how I knew her
Or how we came to meet that night-
She was my science fiction woman,
Who traveled at the speed of light.
At night I look upon the ocean,
The distant stars where she might be-
She was my science fiction woman,
Who set my heart forever free.
June 17,2008
poem by Alexander Shaumyan
Submitted by Poetry Lover
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