Alison Croggon wrote:
>On 31/7/05 10:43 AM, "Kenneth Wolman" <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
>
>
>>There is very little I do "for love" anymore. I started writing at age
>>46 from sheer compulsion and desperation, and that is what keeps me
>>coming back to it long after the illusions of being on Terri Gross's
>>interview show "Fresh Air" have departed like this morning's methane
>>moment.
>>
>>
>
>Strange, Ken; that you say this saddens me. (Although love can be a
>compulsion and desperation as much as anything else). What else but love
>challenges the self to acknowledge its humilities and poverties, to reach
>out into the world around it, to attempt to climb past its own blindnesses?
>As for "recognition" - isn't that really a desire, not for fame, which is a
>tawdry coin, but to be understood?
>
>
Oy. I hate explaining myself. This is not a book introduction. But.
I reached a point nearing middle age where I had to get out what I had
to say. I'd written before...why else Kroetch's comments to me?...but
after spending about 17 years trying to act like a suburban husband--a
state I equated with giving up writing--I snapped on afternoon in my
garage in August 1990. Writing was not a choice, it was not a question
of love or hate, it was a question of mental and spiritual survival.
And it is something I loved doing. But the need, in the gut, to say
things on paper or onscreen, I feel more consciously than I love the
work. Love of doing the work is a motivator, yes; need is a greater
one. Need inspires me into love of the work, of the craft. The
(roughly) year I could not write a word as ghastly. I got past it.
I am my own subject, as though that were a big surprise. If someone
draws from what I see, glimpses the "humilities and poverties" we share,
so much the better. I cannot control that.
As for recognition, it is just that. Being understood at SOME level of
understanding by SOME audience. I suspect "fame" for a poet is having
an audience or a readership.
>(Btw, what's this about "undergraduate women"? Are you speaking about some
>kind of intellectual groupie? And how can writing be, in its essence, an
>aspect of competitiveness, when the acme of writing is always achieving what
>is possible for no one else to achieve; by which I mean that writing, if it
>is competitive in some sense, can only be so in relation to oneself? But I
>suppose I think of Giacometti - success, failure, are secondary...)
>
>
This is not competitiveness, it is a thing that happens as he result of
a potential power relation. It's impolite, it's potentially abusive,
it's not far from nasty stuff. But what I have seen, read about,
almost(!) experienced--you will draw people into an orbit you didn't
even know what there. I have no idea who men in an audience react to
women poets.
Do you think there are NOT groupies out there? I have not met one. But
I am willing to believe any occupation draws them, drawn by the words,
by the magnetism of the poet.
Autobiography to close: My former wife told me that poetry made me a
lousy husband. She was partially correct.
Ke
--
Kenneth Wolman http://kenwolman.blogspot.com
--------------------------------------
"Poetry is tribal not material....this is where you can remember the good
times along with the worst; where you are not allowed to forget the worst,
else you cannot be healed."--C. D. Wright
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