Interview with Norman Fischer at The Argotist Online:
Excerpt:
"First, no one needs me to write, there are enough great writers already. Second, I must do this, and will always fail, yet this doesn’t matter. I will continue to believe that I will get it right the next time and this belief will keep me going. It strikes me that writing (at least writing as I view it, experimental--if that is the word, though I am sure it is not--writing) is a faith. An irrational faith. Really, it is a religion for writers, writing. Writing, you feel whole. Not writing, you feel sinful, unholy, incomplete, guilty, not right. Even if no one is paying money or attention, and you are not getting anywhere at all, you have to do it. I was thinking this the other day, talking to the many good friends, poets, who were at Leslie Scalapino’s funeral, a full on Zen Buddhist funeral at which I was officiating: that religion is essentially an imaginative practice. As writing is. It’s not “real” in the sense we commonly use that word. Writing is also not real. And yet it is essential."
http://www.argotistonline.co.uk/Fischer%20interview.htm
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