One common response I have collected from What Is Cannot Be Unwritten is that it is hard to read. Not in terms of reading comprehension; it’s set no higher than a ninth-grade level, as are all of my books.
No, it’s the subject matter. My mother even said she was struggling to write a review because she was so disturbed by the climax (which I won’t spoil for you).
My response?
“Good.”
That’s exactly what it was intended to do.
Now, I’m not an edgy teenager anymore. I left that behind, oh … 20 years ago. While I do love shock and awe, there’s a deeper reason for the abhorrent climax, which I’d like to share with you today. Maybe you’ll look at my horror show a bit differently.
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The climax scene demonstrates that High Poetry is a dangerous and morally neutral force.
Before this scene, readers have mostly seen High Poetry as benevolent. It heals people, as it does in Pride Before a Fall and Funeral of Hopes, or it makes mountain ranges, as in Saint Luridalr and the Peony Phoenix.
So one would be forgiven the assumption that High Poetry is about making things better and solving all the world’s problems and ensuring everyone is happy.
Alas, that is quite untrue.
As I discussed in my post about religion in the Eirenic Verses, High Poetry may have the trappings of Catholicism, but its hardware is firmly Shinto Buddhism.
Poesy is not a benevolent goddess. She is a goddess of balance. In writing the billions-line verse that generates the world, Poesy doesn’t care about good or bad; she is only concerned with whether the poem flows flawlessly.
Like any good writer, Poesy edits her work, though in real time. She may accept the line edits of her subalterns, the High Poets. But sometimes, she rejects those suggestions, or twists them, or erases someone entirely. She crafts tragedies if those are most suitable for her ultimate aims.
In this ontological framework, the overarching world thread matters more than the individual. A single person, regardless of their intelligence or beauty or value, is insignificant unless they can be used as a tool to achieve balance.
Some people, High Poet or not, are found to be valuable plot devices, while others are deleted.
The mystery of this is that High Poets themselves are constantly wondering about their role in the world-poem. They debate their purpose, ponder how to be of greater value, and try to predict how the poem will end.
But no one within the system can truly know, just as we can’t know our purpose in the real world. We can’t measure our impact, and we can’t foresee how our own story will end. That, to me, is what makes High Poetry so fascinating.
I, as a quasi-Poesy, may know what’s going to happen, but my characters never do. And hopefully, my readers don’t either.
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By showing poetic tragedy, I reflect the devastating power of the artistic process.
While I would expect that no reader truly saw the climax coming, I did foreshadow one of the primary themes of the book early on – through a poem, of course.
In Chapter 5, Mordrek is relaxing with some poetry after murdering two dudes. As one does.
He reads one by Saint Luridalr, who expresses in the most fearsome terms what High Poetry is really about.
It is not enough to write the lines:
expire with each stroke.Bring it from the bowels, purge it
as infection, leaking out of skin.
The perfect vivisection,
scraped from deep within.If there are no labor pains,
the words are not yet born.
Scream, bear down, bare yourself,
shouting, ‘I cannot, I will die—’at last the tiny cry.
Yet this is a death business.
We bleed onto vellum sheet
and repeat, repeat, repeat.
Pure person petrichor
deep inside the ink.
So High Poetry is a death business. There is a tangible threat to the very personhood of the poet, or their subject, each time they compose. This was hinted at in Funeral of Hopes, when Irith refuses to remove Orrinir’s painful childhood memories. High Poetry could make a patient go insane, or leave them permanently crippled, or destroy their home. Or, indeed, kill someone.
That’s why poets train for decades to wield their power; they could die if they don’t get it right. Each poem plays with fate and could cause serious damage, no matter how careful the wielder may be.
Other poems throughout the series reflect on the agonizing creative process. How it tears them up inside and diminishes their life force. In the eighth book, Cerie calls herself a “burning girl,” consumed by her passion. Even the process of becoming a High Poet is awful: the women have their fingernails ripped out.
If you’ve ever chipped a nail, you can imagine how much that hurts, especially when done ten whole times. All the way to the quick, on purpose. Because you want to be a poet so bad.
Why in god’s name would anyone accept that? Because the strength is almost unfathomable. A writer could only dream of being able to make real things happen, in real time, through their words.
Hell, if you offered me that bargain … damn. I might consider it.
As I’ve discussed before, the Eirenic Verses isn’t a simple fantasy series, but a meta-meditation on the entire concept of writing. I say I write in a world where poetry is power, and that’s true. But words have power in our world, too.
The Odyssey. The Magna Carta. Mein Kampf. The Bible. Frankenstein. The Dhammapada. The Art of War. The Unabomber Manifesto.
These bodies of work shook the world and remain endlessly debated decades or centuries later. How could we not believe in the tremendous, life-altering, plot-shattering power of prose?
But it’s not just about historical or social impact. Writing irrevocably alters a person. Everything we write, whether that’s a Reddit flame war or the Great American Novel, impacts our neural wiring, our self-concept, and our place in the world.
And the writing process is painful. I cried more than I have in years when writing Funeral of Hopes because it was me there on the page. That was my life story chopped up and pasted onto a fictional person.
My world makes that maxim more tangible. There was no better way to show that in What Is Cannot Be Unwritten than to watch someone become changed beyond comprehension through their own words. Their body of work became their physical body, and it resulted in a terrible end.
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Poetry’s mechanics are hinted at through this catastrophic failure.
I’m never going to come out and have a High Poet explicitly explain why some poems work and others don’t. Not only would that be a very irritating infodump, but the poets themselves aren’t even sure; that’s said directly in What Is Cannot Be Unwritten.
(Also, I’m not sure either. They’re as clueless as me.)
We can develop our theories, though, based on this devastating climax. Does lingering too much on a specific aspect force Poesy to hyperfocus on that outcome, and thus skew the results? How much does grammar impact things? Would changing the enjambment change the feeling and, thus, the action?
These are all interesting conversations to have, oriented toward a deeper purpose.
I’m trying to make the readers think more deeply about poetry because, well, I love poetry. I’ve been writing poetry since I was in fifth grade; it’s had an enormous role in my life for decades now.
And, frankly, I hate what the modern world has done to this beautiful, ancient art form. People genuinely think you can write a sentence, toss in a few line breaks, and call it a day. Nope. There are specific rules, functions, and techniques necessary to create a truly beautiful poem – many of which have no parallels to prose whatsoever.
I would argue that poetry is the most derided and dismissed craft because so many refuse to study what makes a poem really work.
“Anyone can write a poem! It’s easy,” people say. “Put some words together and you’re done. Nothing to it.”
Sure. If you do it the lazy way, it’s easy. But then you have a dumb boring poem that reads like something I wrote in middle school.
Which is why I have elevated poetry to a genuine magic system. It’s not because I want to write more poems, though that’s a bonus. I want to demonstrate how powerful and difficult they are, so that people are motivated to look more closely at all poetry.
In the Eirenic Verses, even the most beautiful poem can backfire. Now readers are compelled to pore over it and wonder why this poem, of all they have seen thus far in the series, had such a horrible effect. I demand that they reflect on what makes poetry so special – and, perhaps, encourage them to make their own work.
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Do you have to like the gross scenes in my book? No, of course not. You’re not obligated to like anything you don’t want to. You can leave a nasty review complaining about how icky the climax was, or refuse to finish the book now that you know there will be an icky part in it.
I am a-okay with that. Negative reactions will not stop me from pursuing my passions. I want readers to enjoy my work, but I also know that not everyone will like what I write.
In fact, I’m grateful to any reviewer willing to share their complaints. Like Poesy, I might not incorporate those suggestions into my world, but I’ll at least consider them.
My work’s strength is its authenticity, which leaves my eccentrities intact. I’m a weird person, and I don’t get along with everyone. That’s fine.
That’s why I self publish: I enjoy complete artistic freedom. A traditional publisher would probably reject that scene or ask me to tone it down so that readers weren’t left shaken.
Where’s the fun in that? For me, writing is about pushing boundaries, exploring deeper themes, and forcing myself to try harder with every project. The Eirenic Verses has such a massive tonal shift because I get bored easily and always want to try something new.
My fiction writing isn’t my money maker. It’s my enrichment. Without it, I would be a little caged tiger gnawing on the bars of my enclosure – and perhaps mauling someone. I kill characters to satisfy my basest impulses without endangering a real human being. You’re welcome!
I am a ravenous writer and ruthless author. If you’re not overwhelmed with emotion, then I’ve failed. I want you to be amazed, delighted, devastated, or depressed.
And, yes, occasionally disgusted. That, to me, is a job well done.