The painful thing is, it doesn't necessarily go on to happen every time. But
if it doesn't happen once, it's sure as hell can't happen again.
joanna
----- Original Message -----
From: "TheOldMole" <[log in to unmask]>
To: <[log in to unmask]>
Sent: Tuesday, August 21, 2007 5:56 PM
Subject: Re: collage poetry
> It is the truth. But you do know some things. I remember that it happened
> to me, when I was at Iowa. My second or third year there, certainly not my
> first. I spent a lot of time floundering. And then, between one poem and
> the next, I suddenly discovered that I was writing poetry. Everything
> before had been self-indulgence; that was a poem. And it turned out others
> thought so too -- it was published in /Poetry/. (Not by Harriet Monroe --
> I'm not /that /old.) And I think this may be happening to Lynda.
>
> Probably the best description I've ever read of that revelation that one
> is suddenly seeing through the eye of an artist is in Chaim Potok's /My
> Name is Asher Lev/.
>
> It doesn't mean you're in like Flynn. But it does mean you've passed
> through a portal. And it's not a portal everyone passes through, and
> that's why everyone here is so thrilled for you.
>
> Another old saw but a true one -- a writer is a person for whom writing is
> a whole lot harder than it is for anyone else.
>
> Kenneth Wolman wrote:
>> TheOldMole wrote:
>>>
>>> I asked how can you ever be sure
>>> that what you write is really
>>> any good at all and he said you can't
>>>
>>> you can't you can never be sure
>>> you die without knowing
>>> whether anything you wrote was any good
>>> if you have to be sure don't write
>>
>> The God's honest truth. Not because you can but because you fear you
>> can't.
>>
>> k
>>
>> --------------------
>> Ken Wolman rainermaria.typepad.com
>>
>> We're neither pure, nor wise, nor good
>> We'll do the best we know.
>> We'll build our house and chop our wood
>> And make our garden grow...
>>
>> Bernstein/Wilbur, "Candide"
>>
>
> --
> Tad Richards
> http://www.opus40.org/tadrichards/
> http://opusforty.blogspot.com/
>
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