Judy Prince wrote:
>always a curious thing to me, Roger, when poets feel that their inspiration, their brilliance, their talents, have dried up. if you've got "it", and you do, "it" insists on accompanying you.
>
>
Whoa. Who was the old guy who won the Dickinson Prize from the Poetry
Foundation? First book for a person over 50? Stopped writing in the
1940s? Nothing more to say or it dried up? He started again, the old
SOB:-). I DO believe that if the gift is given it is conditional and
can be taken away. Why should a writing gift be any more permanent than
a pet adoption? In the latter a life is involved, in the former only an
ego and "will to create." The key is not to expect one thing or
another. For all the kidding on and offline about Muses, I will believe
in a Muse right after I buy stock in the Tooth Fairy, Tinkerbell, and a
dot-com. Talent is real, ergo I cannot explain it. Degrees of talent I
cannot explain either. Success--building on the talent--I can explain
via hard work, "sweat equity," and having friends in the right places.
Do people get published because they are better than the other guy or
because their have cultivated the right fields?
>me not playing pollyanna, me remarking on what's gloriously evident. "It" enjoys your doubts, i sometimes think. it will just yawn at you, stretch, turn over, and enjoy the next poetic ride. nice . . . don't you think?
>
>
I AM sorry. There is no "it." There is you and your gift and you're
stuck with each other unless you wish to starve your soul. Feed the
gift with work. Don't feed it or it WILL starve. Life also will work
on it. Not writing, life itself. Eugene O'Neill once answered a
questionnaire from a TB sanitorium where he'd been a patient years
before. It asked "Do you take vacations?" He answered "Writing is my
vacation from living so I don't need vacations." If he didn't vacation
from HIM now and then he must've been a miserable bastard.
I am a latecomer to writing, but even I can note the changes. Yes, the
most critical came after my divorce. An old friend and spiritual patron
lamented me losing my "lyric voice" when she read some of the poems that
fell out of the divorce. I said "Bugger my lyric voice, this is what is
honest today."
A WISHING WELL FOR THE DIVORCED
Cardboard carelessly stapled crêpe and ribbon glued
a soft wood frame the first good wind will have it down
this outsized party favor well with a dry bottom
well with no bottom all that is missing is the clown
who works adult parties twists day-glo long balloons to
genital shapes
but who needs clowns the banner 'cross the top
reads A WISHING WELL FOR THE DIVORCED this is perfection
don't screw with it with professionals amateurs do
just as well toss in your coins wedding bands children
the Divorce God is not picky he sucks up all offers made
to his holy name rejects only prayers
written at this Wailing Wall to slip between the bricks
for they are cardboard trompe l'oeil
no charity here no water just the dark nightly blind harvest
blinded selfhood self draw clown faces on Make-A-Wish kids
with pediatric AIDS who want to meet Derek Jeter hear only
the clank of offerings sucked up by the well of the impoverished
cardboard soul buy a stethoscope and seek
the awful proof your heart beats still curse God but live
I didn't retain this version. Too ugly even for me. The pediatric AIDS
line for me is the emotional equivalent of Richard Widmark in "Kiss of
Death" shoving the old lady in the wheelchair down a flight of stairs.
Just a bit much?
It doesn't go away, whatever It is. It changes because I do. I am a
bit terser and less linear and connected. By now it's deliberate. If I
don't recognize and accept the changes it WILL go away and I will have
been responsible.
I don't know what else to say about any of this except that I have the
chutzpah to talk about my work as though I had 12 books out instead of a
goose-egg. Hell, if I won't treat myself like I'm C. K. Williams, who will?
ken
--
Kenneth Wolman
Proposal Development Department
Room SW334
Sarnoff Corporation
609-734-2538
|
