I do have to say that it was very smart on your part, given what you're
saying here, Alison, to make the magic of your secondary world poetry,
more or less.
But the time demanded does seem to be one aspect of fiction that some
poets can never get into (me, for instance), because even the poetic
sequence allows for bits & pieces, & not necessarily a narrative as
such, which certainly a fantasy demands (John Clute actually suggests
in the Encyclopedia of Fantasy that fantasy is essentially story,
especially in the late modern period).
Anyway, here's hoping you make it soon, & can then quit smoking once
again...
Doug
On 14-Jan-05, at 10:10 PM, Alison Croggon wrote:
> Hi Andrew
>
> On 15/1/05 12:22 PM, "Andrew Burke" <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
>
>> For some reason, writing poems is almost a secular version of a
>> sacred act
>> for me, and I go into a different state. That is why I have to banish
>> such
>> states while I am writing a novel. Do you find this? (Perhaps I see
>> novel
>> writing in a classical sense and poems in a romantic way - that'd
>> explain
>> it.)
>
> I'm finding this whole question kind of obsessive at the moment. It's
> partly because this project (aka The Novel) has taken me so much
> longer to
> write than the other ones - it's currently a year later than I would
> have
> liked. And because it's something I have to complete, it basically
> dominated most of 2004, even though I didn't write it most of the time.
> Admittedly it was interrupted by editing two other novels, but it
> wasn't
> just that... I wrote the other two by just going for it - three months
> of
> sitting down and doing my words. But this one has been much more
> difficult,
> partly I think because I had this crazy idea I could simply write
> straight
> after I finished the other one and partly because it is just a more
> complicated book.
>
> Also, I gave up smoking. All that time I couldn't write a bloody word.
> I've started again, alas, and am now writing fine. I am facing the
> strong
> possibility that my entire writing life has been a nicotine-fuelled
> drug
> frenzy.
>
> Anyway... One result of TN (The Novel) has been that I'm feeling
> starved of
> poems. Novels are big black holes, they suck everything into their
> orbits.
> And while I kind of miss that all-encompassing feeling when I finish
> them, I
> also really need to write poems, for some kind of inner mental ecology.
> They don't get banished - the impulses that might otherwise be poems
> get
> mixed up in the great turbine that is The Novel. But of course, then
> they're not poems. I'm finding the prose kind of surges between what
> might
> be called good, plain English, the kind of getting the job done prose,
> and
> then little emotional/lyric peaks that can only be called poetic, even
> if
> they're not poetry. I think that's where the poetry is going. But I
> feel
> it's a little unfair on it, and the poetry seems to think so too. It's
> taking its revenge on me, and if I don't spend a few poetic months
> staring
> out of windows soon, I don't know what will happen (insert smiley
> thing).
> It's really such an odd way to spend one's life.
>
> Ah well, freedom in a couple of weeks...
>
> It's been some years since I read Billy The Kid, but I remember liking
> it a
> lot. I'll have to drag it out and have another look.
>
> All the best
>
> A
>
> Alison Croggon
>
> Blog: http://theatrenotes.blogspot.com
> Editor, Masthead: http://masthead.net.au
> Home page: http://alisoncroggon.com
>
>
Douglas Barbour
Department of English
University of Alberta
Edmonton Alberta T6G 2E5 Canada
(780) 436 3320
http://www.ualberta.ca/~dbarbour/dbhome.htm
The poet is ecstatic, having dreamt of this visit for weeks.
He takes Erato’s face, dribbling and wild, between his hands
and kisses her gently as if she were a runaway teenager.
Diana Hartog
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