"When you write a poem, speak as if to an intimate, someone you knew well enough that you can speak to him casually in your most intelligent voice, said Jon Anderson in a long-gone conference I am sure he wouldn't have remembered, though I never forgot. To this, I'd add, speak from a particular place. From a room or outside an abbey or in a cottage of sleepers or on a beach in winter." ~ Nancy Eimers "Summon all your courage, exert all your vigilance, invoke all the gifts that Nature has been induced to bestow. Then let your rhythmical sense wind itself in and out among me and women, omnibuses, sparrows--whatever come along the street--until it has strung them together in one harmonious whole. That perhaps is your task--to find the relation between things that seem incompatible yet have a mysterious affinity, to absorb every experience that comes our way fearlessly and saturate it completely so that your poem is a whole, not a fragment; to re-think human life into poetry and so give us tragedy again and comedy by means of characters not spun out of length in the novelist's way, but condensed and synthesized in the poet's way--that is what we look to you to do now." ~ Virginia Woolf "A scrupulous writer, in every sentence that he writes, will ask himself at least four questions, thus: What am I trying to say? What words will express it? What image or idiom will make it clearer? Is this image fresh enough to have an effect? And he will probably ask himself two more: Could I put it more shortly? Have I said anything that is avoidably ugly?" ~ George Orwell "Technique holds a reader from sentence to sentence, but only content will stay in his mind." ~ Joyce Carol Oates "One way of ending a poem is to turn it back on itself, like a serpent with its tail in its mouth." ~ Maxine Kumin "Words in prose ought to express the intended meaning; if they attract attention to themselves, it is a fault; in the very best styles you read page after page without noticing the medium." ~ Samuel Taylor Coleridge "Our words must seem to be inevitable." ~ William Butler Yeats "Best advice on writing I've ever received: Finish." ~ Peter Mayle "My experiences with trying to help people to write has been limited but extremely intensive. I have done everything from giving would-be writers money to live on to plotting and rewriting their stories for them, and so far I have found it all to be a waste. The people whom God or nature intended to be writers find their own answers, and those who have to ask are impossible to help. They are merely people who want to be writers." ~ Raymond Chandler "I never presume to give advice on writing. I think the best way to learn to write is to read books and stories by good writers. It's a hard thing to preach about. As Thelonious Monk once said, about his field, 'Talking about music is like dancing about architecture.' " ~ Maureen Dowd
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"A short workshop occasionally will do, but if you are too involved with writing programs, you stop writing for yourself and begin writing for the instructor." ~ Susan Isaacs "The best advice I've ever received was from Barbara Kafka: 'Don't put in all you know--you will live to write again.' " ~ Corby Kummer "Writing teachers invariably tell students, Write about what you know. That's, of course, what you have to do, but on the other hand, how do you know what you know until you've written it? Writing is knowing. What did Kafka know? The insurance business? So this kind of advice is foolish, because it presumes that you have to go out to a war to be able to do war. Well, some do and some don't. I've had very little experience in my life. In fact, I try to avoid experience if I can. Most experience is bad." ~ E.L. Doctorow "Every writer must articulate from the specific. They must reach down where they stand, because there is nothing else from which to draw." ~ Gloria Naylor "If you know what you are going to write when you're writing a poem, it's going to be average. Creating a poem is a continual process of re-creating your ignorance, in the sense of not knowing what's coming next. A lot of poets historically have described a kind of trance. It's not like a Vedic trance where your eyes cross, and you float. It's a process not of knowing, but of unknowing, of learning again. The next word or phrase that's written has to feel as if it's being written for the first time, that you are discovering the meaning of the word as you put it down. That's the ideal luck of writing a poem." ~ Derek Walcott In my previous blog post, I discussed my personal connection to three controversial quotations, or hot takes, from well-known writers. I want to keep the flow going by expressing my personal feelings toward three more hot takes. "Artists never thrive in colonies. Ants do. What the budding artist needs is the privilege of wrestling with his problems in solitude--and now and then a a piece of red meat." ~ Henry Miller Even though certain writers do thrive at writers colonies, conferences, and so forth, I tend to learn more about poetry writing whenever I read and write by myself. As a hermit in many ways, I do not learn as much as I want to whenever I take, for instance, long workshops with many other writers. The one-on-one mentorship I had with my poetry professor at my alma mater, however, helped me a lot since the instruction directly addressed my personal needs as a writer. Either way, now that I am in grad school with seemingly zero opportunities to be mentored, I will continue to learn best in the privacy of my apartment, studying great poems and revising my own works to the best of my ability. And maybe I will eat the occasional "piece of red meat" along the way. "Criticism can never instruct or benefit you. Its chief effect is that of a telegram with dubious news. Praise leaves no glow behind, for it is a writer's habit to remember nothing good of himself. I have usually forgotten those who have admired my work, and seldom anyone who disliked it. Obviously, this is because praise is never enough and censure always too much." ~ Ben Hecht I dislike the word "criticism" in writing workshops because it carries so much negative connotations, and if one enters a sensitive learning environment that "hinges upon" negativity, disappointment may ensue, as has happened to me far too often in writing workshops. Hence, I prefer saying "suggestions for improvement," an idea replete with positive connotations. I also dislike when writers assume they "know" the "correct" way to "fix" my poems, as though my poems are nothing but broken birdhouses in need of a few more nails. Detailed suggestions, not solutions, work best for me. Moreover, hoping or expecting praise, as Hecht references in his quote, can lead to disappointment as well. In my grad school workshops, I seldom receive praise, and the praise I receive often sounds like this: "We know Jacob writes great descriptions, but is that enough?" Or: "We know Jacob's poem is beautiful, but is that okay?" Or: "Jacob's poem makes sense, but does it make enough sense?" These backhanded compliments have taught me a valuable lesson: Do not write "likeable" poems; instead, write with clarity of meaning and richness of language. "You can write about *anything*, and if you write well enough, even the reader with no intrinsic interest in the subject will become involved." ~ Tracy Kidder I once wrote that a poem is like a mystical lake that the reader can walk across, dance on, swim under. A poem must make sense "on the surface level," but can have deeper meaning "below the surface." Regardless, for a reader to bond with a poem deeply or intrinsically, the reader should see herself in the poem, like a reflection on a lake. Even though I cannot control who will like my work--I am starting not to care as much about the likability factor of my work, anyway--I can still write whatever I wish. And I hope to write with greater clarity and emotion as I explore more personal subject matter. As a matter of fact, I have started to write clearer poems with more honed music--poems about my homosexuality and family.
For my last blog entry, I listed many fascinating, literary quotes. As an MFA student learning so much about poetry writing, I wanted to spend time here, in my latest blog entry, to discuss my personal connection to three of those quotes. If you haven't already, please read the full list of quotes in my previous blog entry before reading ahead. "The writer is only free when he can tell the reader to go jump in the lake. You want, of course, to get what you have to show across to him, but whether he likes it or not is no concern of the writer." -Flannery O'Connor, author When I first read this quote, I was shocked. For all of my writing life, I wanted readers to like what I had to say. And even though I still want readers to like my poems, O'Connor's hot take has reassured me that writing "likable" poems should not matter to a creative. It has been said that beyond all else, one's creative work must be interesting. No matter how hard I wish for my readers to like what I write, I cannot control their judgments. I can, however, encourage readers to read more of my work if I continue to write with clarity of meaning and richness of music. A lot of the greatest poems still read have been (and in some cases still are) deemed "unlikable." Hence, if I wish to write poems worthy of being reread, I need to stop worrying about other people's "likes and dislikes," which can be instructive but also annoyingly arbitrary, and instead focus on writing the best poems I can. "The only way to write is well and how you do it is your own damn business." -A.J. Liebling, journalist As I wrote above, I need to focus on writing the best poems I can. To do so requires me to embrace the most constructive forms of learning at my disposal, including studying published poems in the privacy of my apartment. One of the most haunting pieces of feedback I received as an undergrad came from my then-poetry professor, who said, "No one will care about whether you continue to write after college." It may seem obvious, but society doesn't generally encourage people to become creative writers, unless you can make lots of money from your work, which seldom happens. I have asked myself, "Do I want to continue writing creatively? Am I good at it? Can I do something with it in the job market (if I so choose)?" and the answer to these questions has been an unequivocal "Yes" for several years now. To quote the author above, my growth and passion as a writer are my "own damn business." If others wish to help me along the way, then I will take the most constructive aspects of their help, leaving any other personal judgments or criticisms of my work alone as much as possible. And I will to treat my fellow MFA classmates the same way. That is, I want all of us to grow, but my own development as a writer--as a human being, arguably--matters more than my desire to, for instance, connect deeply to EVERYONE in grad school. I have one life to live, and I can quickly burn out emotionally whenever I linger on other classmates' successes and shortcomings. How I write or grow is indeed my damn business, but more important, it's my prerogative.
This quote lends itself to the first quote above: do not simply write "likable" or "nice" poems or short stories or essays or whatever. Instead, write interesting, bold works worthy of being reread. One poet has said that each line of a poem should in some way shock or at least captivate the reader. In other words, each syllable, each word, each image should keep the reader reading. To quote Judy Jordan, my current poetry professor, "Push your language." This lesson--more of a mantra by now--is close to my heart. Whenever I revise a poem, I ask myself, "What is this poem saying? Is the poem clear enough? Is the music honed? Is there enough tension to keep the reader interested? Is there any word or phrase that would confuse the reader needlessly? If so, does the word or phrase carry a connotation that I should avoid? Does the word or phrase sound too formal or informal? Does the word or phrase builds the meaning and magic of the poem accurately and vividly?"
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