What is Romance?

What is Romance?

By Jeff Salter 

            For our blog’s inaugural week, we have a moment to introduce ourselves.  I won’t repeat, here, what I’ve already posted on the ‘bio’ portion of this site (see the ‘About us’ tab on the home page).  But I guess it might be appropriate to hint at WHY I’m here with these four talented writing foxes.

            I dabbled with writing as a child, but I knew as early as 8^th grade that writing was a ‘fire’ inside me.  As a 10^th grader, I experienced an explosion of creative output which convinced me that I could be nothing less than a professional writer.  LOL.  Alas, life got in the way.  I married, had kids, brought home salaries, and ground-out a profession or two (including several years in Journalism), but none of that had the exhilaration I’ve felt when writing creatively — mostly poetry.  [Probably over 900 poems by now … including about 120 which have been published.]

            Along the way, I’ve spent over four decades being certain that I was destined to be the 21^st Century’s replacement for Robert Frost.  After all, nobody else had risen to shoulder that load.  Ha.

            It was only after taking an early retirement from librarianship and relocating from LA to KY (so my wife could be near her aging and ailing folks), that my life-long writing ‘fire’ switched from poetic flames … to novels.  Who wouldda thunk it?  Certainly not me.  I used to denigrate long-winded fiction writers (behind their backs, of course) by saying, proudly:  “What a novel can say in 400 pages and a short story can say in 40 pages … I can say in 40 LINES of fine poetry!”

            Well, that ill-informed bombast quickly evaporated once I began trying to contain the ‘flames’ of the stories inside my brain in late 2006.  In these four-and-a-half years:  six complete novel manuscripts, numerous other ‘starts’, and dozens more story concepts.  Can I keep up such a pace?  Very doubtful.  Nor should I try … or fret about it.  My second novel proved the first one was not a fluke.  My third proved I could tell a really good story with lively characters.

            So why am I HERE?

            In the past 16 months alone, I’ve written three of those six complete manuscripts.  Can you guess what they are?  Well, as best I can assess them – with input from my readers – two are ‘screwball’ romantic comedies and one is ‘regular’ romantic comedy (or possibly comedic romance … not certain).

            Well, I’ve already blown my budget of words for this column on my ‘brief’ intro.  So let me test my former braggadocio about how well my poetry condenses vast notions into just a few lines.

            Here’s a poem from decades ago which, I believe, hints at the question, “What is Romance?”

            Of Seeing Her

            By Jeffrey L. Salter

He shuddered

(like he brushed a low amperage connection)

when she smiled through the window

and walked in

            toward his table.

 

Unaccustomed to this waiver of insulation

and unprepared for such electricity,

he wondered whether anyone had noticed

… as though he’d involuntarily giggled,

            then blushed.

 

But that disorientation was grounded

by his odd delectation

of this circuit’s current.

            And he felt the urgent – but uneasy – desire

to be shocked again.

 

[Published in Sunday at Four — Vol. 5 # 1 (Spring 1996), p. 16.]

                        ——

            Whatever romance IS, it’s complicated.  But chiefly:  it incorporates the exhilarating, improbable, often irrational, creative – and sometimes painful – rush of feelings, thoughts, and physical sensations.

            Until next time, thanks for reading.

                        Jeff [on Thursdays]