I talked about this years ago with Armand Schwerner. We had both experienced a change in the nature of the drive to write, that it had become less a compulsion and more a choice as we aged. Like a lot of other drives, by the way. How this functions on a day to day basis is more complex, at least for me. I write when I write, I don't worry about it much when I don't. My sense is that neither I nor any readers need volume for its own sake, which is often accompanied by a vitiation of quality.

On the other hand, I continue to carry my notebook, and in fertile times I scribble at whatever odd moments--on the subway, at readings, etc. The extraction or shaping into poems for publication is another matter (or even showing work to friends)--I tend not to get around to it very often. This hasn't always been the case. I've always been both diffident and confused about publication, as witness the 19 year gap between my two full collections (and when the next comes out in the spring it will have been an additional 13 years), during which I published little in journals but was very busy with the rest of my life. But during that time I was producing finished work. My process has changed: the notebooks tend to take on a life of their own, and for the most part I tend not to worry about whipping its parts into any kind of shape unless an mpulse comes from outside, as recently when Hal Johnson asked me for work for Hamilton Stone, or when a reading is scheduled.

Which is a long way to say that for me at least publication has been at best a sporadic motivator.or inhibitor.

One big change for all of us, I think, is the advent of the internet, which raises all of our profiles. It's especially helpful for those as diffident as I am.

Mark


At 11:22 AM 1/27/2008, you wrote:

Douglas, you seem sanguine & accepting about "the basic impulse" being gone.
So, there *is* life after poetry.
I too am interested in what you say about blocks.
I think poetry is social contact.  It mightn't look like it, it might look like the opposite.
I have a short poem
http://maireadbyrne.blogspot.com/2006/01/perfect-art-form-for-those-who-like-to.html
Or maybe publication is social contact.  If one has a bad--or even just cold--experience publishing, it can stop the impulse to publish, which can stop the impulse to write.
(I mean "publish" in any way poets publish, including just showing the work to someone else).
Mairead

On Jan 27, 2008 10:52 AM, Douglas Clark < [log in to unmask]> wrote:

----- Original Message -----

From: [log in to unmask]

To: [log in to unmask]

Sent: Sunday, January 27, 2008 12:55 PM

Subject: Re: Love Poems

Douglas:

>"I dont write anymore. I realise that my writers block is

caused by material in my life that I dont know enough about to analyse

properly so it is best left alone."<

This is interesting Douglas. Could you say more. The issue of how analysis, or not, of subjective experience feeds into writing, or not, is, well, interesting.

Tim A.

=

 

Tim

 

I have always thought of myself

as a love poet so this is a nice way to finish

things off.

 

Re love after thirty years I seemed to lose love

ten years ago and now the psychotic vestige has gone

so I am free. So it also means my basic impulse in poetry has gone.

 

Cheers.