Alison
I like 'shovels', in fact I really like it. What a verb to tell the truth,
of our utter hopeless humanity, which Northern Arts for example are quite
helpless to deal with, however important they might make some people feel.
I know that shovel so well, it might be my own, but whoever owns it most
definitely clangs on my head day by day.
dave
----- Original Message -----
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Sent: Tuesday, April 10, 2001 9:41 PM
Subject: Re: STIMULUS - POETRY AND FEAR
> Sometimes I have thought that writing poems requires courage, and that
> suggests that it makes one afraid. But what is there to be afraid of?
>
> When you talk about "risk" in a poem, what is the risk? Perhaps the
> biggest risk, here, that is, where poetry does not attract political
> violences, is that you might make a fool of yourself. Or that someone
> might not like what you write.
>
> These seem pretty minor fears, even petty.
>
> Borges talks of the Other who writes. I have sometimes written poems
> which have made me afraid when I read them, although they would frighten
> no one else: perhaps because I cannot recognise the me who wrote them.
> When I am writing intensely, I always feel very mortal. Perhaps the act
> of writing poems shovels aside the protective illusions which permit me
> to navigate my day, and the contingency of my existence becomes very
> clear to me. This is all right, up to a point: it can make me feel very
> alive; but it can also be a little crippling. I sometimes believe that
> the fear that poetry expresses is of death. This feels true and obvious,
> without my knowing quite what it means.
>
> Alison
>
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