Rebecca Seiferle wrote:
>Hi Ken,
>
>and thanks for the welcome back.Thanks too for your recent post on Philip
>Dacey, though I didn' know he was still around; there are a good number of
>works by Eakins at the Boston Museum of Fine Arts where I just was the other
>day, though mostly to look at Gauguin's Where are we going...etc.
>
>
Dacey retired in the last year or two, I gather, and migrated from
Minnesota to New York City. I don't think there's a Garrison Keillor
schtick in there (thank God), but there could be (warn me so I leave
town). Somehow--I think via a canny agent with whom he apparently had
an "in"--he found an affordable apartment near Lincoln Center. So he
goes to concerts, listens to recorded music, owns no TV whatsoever, and
goes to movies. And still writes.
>Well, maybe I envy your envy of giftedness, since I've never envied another's art
>or craft or skill or fame. I guess I could claim that it's some virtue, but it's just
>an absence, it's never made any sense of me as if an eagle would envy a warbler.
>
I have always wanted more than mere envy. I want to inhabit writers
whose work I love, become like one of I. B. Singer's supercharged
impersonation-demons. Or I think I would like to. I'm a cuckoo. Or I
think I am. I haven't heard the cry of the goniff in almost four years,
since I read Frank Stanford and realized I'd been stealing from him
before I ever heard of him. This should not be shocking, but I don't
think I've ever written an original word in my life. It is not Dacey's
words that attract, it's how he thinks. Which means it's how he strings
words together. Which means it's Dacey's words. It's his voice I
want. I want to steal the ease of the voice--and the ease is a studied
lie because I have it on good authority that Phil Dacey is known to work
every poem to death to make it sound like it's a Snapshot. So perhaps
I'm attacking my own laziness. What did Castiglione mean by
"sprezzatura"--making it look easy? I can't have it but I want it
anyway. Reading people who make it (what?) sound easy takes me from
envy to irritation to determination and back. In a way it was a huge
mistake for me to get involved in the Snaps. Yes, force you to
write...but one or two luck-out moments can allow you the delusion that
this is how you write poetry.
>But then maybe it's just that all my jealousy is very particular and that except for
>one or two occasions I might never have tasted its sting.
>
My "models" are at a distance. Nothing to do with quality here--there
is plenty--but I don't find myself influenced by people I know on this
list or even off. I have a whole anxiety closet full of used-to-knows
or never-knews who work well as models of "I wanna be like you when I
grow up."
>I liked the poem you posted.
>
>
Me or Dacey? Don't answer that.
As far as Passion of the Christ, I don't remember a word of the
discussion and am not going near it again. Knock yourself out.
Ken
----------------------------------------
Kenneth Wolman www.kenwolman.com kenwolman.blogspot.com
39. Not observing the imperfections of others, preserving silence and a continual communion with God will eradicate great imperfections from the
soul and make it the possessor of great virtues.
--St. John of the Cross, Maxims on Love (The Minor Works)
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