Sorry to be slow on this, Andrew. Email down by southern oceans not all it could be.
Your first anecdote sounds like you needed to do something wordlessly physical and it loosened you up and
bifurcated your poem successfully.
Second anecdote is also interesting. To do justice to another's experience. Not exactly the same thing but I felt
moved to write something about Dane Kowalski whose body turned up near Coober Pedy this week after a
prolonged campaign organised by his friends and family to locate him after he had not been heard of since
heading off from Diamond Creek three months ago. My wife thought I was being heartless by even writing
about it in poetical form. I saw connections, possibly with Burke and Wills and even Shakespeare's famous
Dane. Was I sincere? I don't know. But I have been accused of being disrespectful. I'll let it sit on my back
burner for a bit. Your account of your friend's hospital experience sounds more justifiable on reflection. Or, as
Max has said, perhaps we should settle for being convincing. I have tried to follow my ideas more than words
this week but perhaps they are both bound up as Doug has suggested. Tim, I take your point too, about what
poets might be trying to do and how a variety of approaches can all be seen as legitimate.
Bill
On Mon, Mar 16th, 2015 at 4:06 PM, Andrew Burke <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
> Oh what a slippery fish sincerity is when speaking of creativity. For my
> practice, the 'true facts' are my basic sincerity, as I see them or
> remember them, written in plain language - that provides the sincerity
> of
> most of my writing, but there are exptremities. Two anecdotes may
> suffice::
>
> Once, in the darkest pit of night and emotions, I wrote words which
> tumbled
> out of me onto an envelope, all over it, inside and out. It was a mess,
> and
> my head was a mess, and I went back to bed and fucked my (then) wife as
> hard as I could (gentle creature that I usually am). The next morning my
> wife made me breakfast and I worked on this jumble of words. It turned
> out
> to be not one but two poems born at once! I shuffled one out of it as
> SITTING TOGETHER and found the words and lines I had shoved to one side
> came to exactly the same length of poem, and was about SITTING ALONE. A
> truly given poetry and absolutely sincere in word and image.
>
> The other time, a more established poet than myself related an event of
> racing himself to hospital because of a suspected coronary occlusion,
> with
> his nurse wife by his side, a passenger because she doesn't drive, when
> his
> old car gave up the ghost on a small hill before the hospital, a
> tree-lined
> road where the Catholic cathedral stood between the T-junction and the
> Emergency department. From there they had to walk, he worried about the
> car
> and she worried about him. Both where mended and out on the road in no
> time, but ther story of the drama lingered and he told it so passionately
> that I urged him to write it down, just as he told me. But he wouldn't,
> and
> didn't. Weeks went by and I took the unusual step of writing it for him
> as
> if I was the subject of the drama and the narrator. I was surprised at
> how
> well it worked - it was published somewhere in a journal and subsequently
> in a book of mine. Was it 'sincere'? In some way I feel it was because I
> felt so much for him and his near escape from the grim reaper. Is it just
> a
> well-intentioned confidence trick?
>
> Andrew
>
> On 16 March 2015 at 08:53, Bill Wootton <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
>
> > Mm. Have to think on this some, Doug, Max. And when I say think, I mean
> > ruminate and I suppose I mean explore from what I think I know or can
> > recall from experience or having read. That process may be
> pre-linguistic.
> > Sincerity, it strikes me, is a mood as much a stance or a 'technique'.
> Kind
> > of an emotional readiness for truth as you see it.
> >
> > Can sincere art be produced by an insincere artist or an artist who is
> not
> > sincere at the time of creation? Not sure. But equally not sure that my
> > individual cache of words will help me draw a conclusion. I'd be making
> a
> > judgment I suppose. Yes, sincere, or no, not so or not fully so. And
> 'yes'
> > and 'no' are words of course but what if my head inclines to nod or
> begins
> > to shake from side to side. Is this a whole body rejection or
> affirmation?
> > Where do 'gut feelings' stand? When it comes to sharing such thoughts,
> of
> > course, I realise, as here in this format, I am confined to words.
> >
> > Bill
> >
> >
> > > On 16 Mar 2015, at 2:20 am, Douglas Barbour <[log in to unmask]>
> > wrote:
> > >
> > > Sincerity is a very dangerous & difficult concept in art. It's the
> art's
> > sincerity that counts, not the artist's.
> > >
> > > And, I have to admit that the words come first for me: "no ideas but
> in
> > words'?
> > >
> > > Doug
> > >> On Mar 14, 2015, at 4:55 PM, Bill Wootton <[log in to unmask]>
> > wrote:
> > >>
> > >> When one has begun to write, the hardest thing is to be sincere.
> > Essential to mull over that idea and to define artistic sincerity.
> > Meanwhile, I hit upon this: the word must never precede the idea. Or
> else:
> > the word must always be necessitated by the idea. It must be
> irresistible
> > and inevitable; and the same is true of the sentence, of the whole work
> of
> > art.
> > >>
> > >> Guilty of selecting and including words before ideas, at least
> > sometimes, perhaps more often than I care to admit.
> > >>
> > >> Bill
> > >
> > > Douglas Barbour
> > > [log in to unmask]
> > >
> > > Recent publications: (With Sheila E Murphy) Continuations &
> Continuation
> > 2 (UofAPress).
> > > Recording Dates (Rubicon Press).
> > >
> > > There is no life that does not rise
> > > melodic from scales of the marvelous.
> > >
> > > To which our grief refers.
> > >
> > > Robert Duncan.
> > >
> >
>
>
>
> --
> Andrew
> http://hispirits.blogspot.com/
> 'Undercover of Lightness'
> http://walleahpress.com.au/recent-publications.html
> 'Shikibu Shuffle'
> http://abovegroundpress.blogspot.com.au/2012/03/new-from-aboveground-press-shikibu.html
>
>
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