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Doug -- I was, and continue to be, amazed that it happened to me. It meant nothing but work and frustration after that, as with all of us, but at least I knew I was working with the real tools of poetry. And I learned that development as an artist comes in these odd plateaus. You don't get incrementally better. You bang your head against a wall ten, twenty, fifty times with no apparent effect at all, and then suddenly you're on the other side, like the ram with the dam in Frank Sinatra's song, or the guy on death row in the science fiction story (well, hopefully not quite like that). Douglas Barbour wrote: > Great little tale, Tad. I don't know if I can remember such a moment > as such. > > Oddly, I got your note after I got responses to it, & that has been > true of a bunch of others today as well. > > Oh well, perhaps that's a cut-up technique the site is 'practicing' > all on its own.... > > Doug > On 21-Aug-07, at 10:56 AM, TheOldMole wrote: > >> 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/ >> >> > Douglas Barbour > 11655 - 72 Avenue NW > Edmonton Ab T6G 0B9 > (780) 436 3320 > http://www.ualberta.ca/~dbarbour/ > > Latest book: Continuations (with Sheila E Murphy) > http://www.uap.ualberta.ca/UAP.asp?LID=41&bookID=664 > > > Every time Dick Cheney smiles > an angel in heaven > gets waterboarded. > > Jon Stewart > -- Tad Richards http://www.opus40.org/tadrichards/ http://opusforty.blogspot.com/