On that last point, Anny:
"If you can't annoy somebody, what's
the point in writing?"
--Kingsley Amis
Halvard Johnson
================
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http://home.earthlink.net/~halvard/vidalocabooks.html
On Jul 1, 2008, at 8:38 AM, Anny Ballardini wrote:
> Very interesting questions.
> To the question: Why do you write, I heard the following answers
> (which does
> not mean I agree with them):
> Out of passion; Because poetry is breath for me; To find answers, to
> give a
> perspective to events and facts that goes beyond what is; To make
> people
> mad, ....
>
> have a great day, Anny
>
> On Tue, Jul 1, 2008 at 3:24 PM, Joseph Duemer <[log in to unmask]>
> wrote:
>
>> "How do we, as poets, sustain the/this vocation?"
>>
>> Stephen, that, for me, was the most crucial part of your original
>> post, and
>> in that post as well as in this follow-up you recognize a set of
>> social
>> forces acting on or in relationship to the writing of poetry. On a
>> cosmic
>> scale, of course, all our lives are ephemeral. We will die, the sun
>> will
>> burn out, the universe collapse (or expand infinitely toward
>> nothingness) &
>> in spite of this we cook meals, get married, take jobs, write
>> poems, strive
>> for fame, etc. But to say that we write poems only to drop them
>> into the
>> abyss seems sophomoric to me -- it's a shallow response. A related
>> response
>> is to note the true fact that much (but not all) literary publishing
>> depends
>> on various minor forms of corruption & so to hell with it. So those
>> books
>> you're reviewing -- you're right -- will slide most likely into
>> oblivion.
>> What keeps those writers writing? What is the direct payoff? How do
>> they
>> continue to write with conviction? Isn't part of "sustaining" a
>> literary
>> life having a system of publication & distribution that makes
>> sense? That
>> is, isn't publication of some sort part of the way we sustain a
>> writing
>> life? "Of some sort" then becomes the thing that needs defining.
>> What sort?
>>
>> jd
>>
>>
>> On Mon, Jun 30, 2008 at 1:13 PM, Robin Hamilton <
>> [log in to unmask]> wrote:
>>
>>> Interesting. Toward the end of my teaching career, my university
>>>> accepted my web publications as equal to my 'real'. page-based,
>>>> ones.
>>>>
>>>
>>> How old are you, Doug, or in which country?
>>>
>>> For me, even hard-copy counted against me.
>>>
>>> "Do you find that writing poetry *interferes with your
>>> teaching,
>> Dr.
>>> Hamilton?"
>>>
>>> Having been turned down for at least four jobs because I wrote
>>> poetry, it
>>> was hysterically funny to find myself stopped at the Efficiency Bar.
>>>
>>> {Not that the Suits could actujllly *do anything to me, as I'd
>>> already
>>> topped the salary limit.)
>>>
>>> If you write poetry in the UK, you don't just button your mouth
>>> but you
>>> sew your lips shut.
>>>
>>> Or it was once.
>>>
>>> {One of the killers in the UK was "peer reviewed publications".
>>> That
>> meant
>>> poets and dramturges made common cause.
>>>
>>> Fuck all good it did, and it all went down te tank when the UK
>>> Academic
>>> Academic Review Exercise decided to exclude reviews.
>>>
>>> Do you *know how long it takes to write a decemt review if there are
>> maybe
>>> three people in the ever-loving world who'd bother to read what
>>> you say?
>>> Same time it takes takes to write a (peer reviewed) article.
>>>
>>> Natch, the Lost Boys (good on then) promptly stopped writing revew
>> articles
>>> ...
>>>
>>> End result is if you read an academic review today, you get what
>>> you you
>>> pay for -- if you pay monkeys, you get peanuts.
>>>
>>> Way it goes ...
>>>
>>> :-(
>>>
>>> R.
>>>
>>
>>
>>
>> --
>> Joseph Duemer
>> Professor of Humanities
>> Clarkson University
>> Weblog: sharpsand.net
>>
>
>
>
> --
> Anny Ballardini
> http://annyballardini.blogspot.com/
> http://www.fieralingue.it/modules.php?name=poetshome
> http://www.moriapoetry.com/ebooks.html
> I Tell You: One must still have chaos in one to give birth to a
> dancing
> star!
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