the cassandra pages

Wislawa Szymborska

Sometimes the world goes a little more silent, and so it was yesterday when I heard of the death of Wislawa Szymborska. In her 88 years she had only published 400 poems, saying that she wrote many more, but always re-read the previous day's work the next morning: "Many," she added dryly, "don't survive." So this was a poet who was not prolific, nor had she had fallen in love with the sound of her own voice. Instead, each poem said something that mattered, and therefore the silence today is multiplied.

My own attraction to Polish poetry began perhaps fifteen years ago, or even more, after I had gone on a two-year binge of reading Russian literature, ending up with Akhmatova and Mandelstam. From there, in my search for voices of survival, hope, and sustenance among intellectuals and artists during times of war, and what I perceived as both social decay and indifference to what was really happening, I moved to the post-WWII poets of Poland. I was mainly drawn to Zbigniew Herbert, Tadeusz Rozewicz, Czeslaw Milosz, and their younger colleague Adam Zagajewski: all poets who wrote beautiful poems about the darkness and the light.

In 1996, Szymborska won the Nobel Prize for Literature. I bought her book View with a Grain of Sand, but didn't particularly like it at first. Somewhere around that time, I had a conversation about these Polish poets with my friend Kingsley, who had been a headmaster in a NYC Episcopal school and was a great reader as well as a man of strong and considered opinions ."She seems so...ironic, and almost flip," I said. "There's a sort of black humor in her work, and I guess I'm more attracted to the lyricism of the others...you know, the apricots hanging from the tree, the memories of past loves, the beauty in spite of everything that's happened." K. , who was about thirty years olderthan I was, laughed and said, "Yes, but that's exactly what I like about Szymborska. She's unflinching, she doesn't paper over anything, yet there's a humor and irony in her writing. Just wait -- I think you'll come to appreciate her more."

He was right, and it didn't take long. So much happened in the next ten years, and it changed me. After seeing death several times over, after loss and grief, after watching my country change irreparably, after leaving my home and reconsidering most of my beliefs, I found that the way I had looked at the world before no longer served: it had been well-considered theory, but not a lived reality. I had become more skeptical and less idealistic; stronger but also more cognizant of human frailty; more aware of the beauty in everyday life and the poignancy of each moment. I had found that humor was a great ally in dealing with the worst of things, and also with helping others to cope, and that the absurd is never far from the most serious human endeavor, especially in the way we seem to refuse to learn anything from our own history.

When I returned to Szymborska, it was immediately clear to me that K. had been right. I often had her poetry on my bedside table, and always found something truthful that made me nod my head with both admiration for her, and determination for the next day. But her poetry was never harsh or unfeeling; quite the contrary. She simply refused to be sentimental, and faced things as they really were. Now I think I saw in her a particular kind of strength that was female, and with which I increasingly indentified. The only words I can find to encapsulate Szymborska are "a soft toughness." You can see it in her face.

She hasn't talked a great deal about herself, but I liked this quote, from Szymborska's obituary in The Guardian:

"Everyone needs solitude, especially a person who is used to thinking about what she experiences. Solitude is very important in my work as a mode of inspiration, but isolation is not good in this respect. I am not writing poetry about isolation," she said, going on to wonder why anyone would want to interview her. "For the last few years my favourite phrase has been 'I don't know'. I've reached the age of self-knowledge, so I don't know anything. People who claim that they know something are responsible for most of the fuss in the world."

Yesterday, when I heard the news, it seemed ironic and coincidental that I had just taken down her book and quoted from it here two days before. But then again, perhaps it wasn't so odd, because, as I said, I re-read her poems often. It was Szymborska who I had planned to pick for Marly Youmans' "Lydian Stones" project - a choice that would probably seem too obvious now. But at the time, looking at the jacket photograph with her ever-present cigarette, I had wondered how she was doing, with no idea she was in the process of leaving the world.

Last night I read Szymborska again, trying to identify a favorite poem to copy here. There are too many, so it was impossible, but I'll settle on this one which is about a journey, and embodies the qualities I've tried to describe.

 

INTO THE ARK

An endless rain is just beginning.
Into the ark, for where else can you go:
you poems for a single voice,
private exultations,
unnecessary talents,
surplus curiosity,
short-range sorrows and fears,
eagerness to see things from all sides.

Rivers are swelling and bursting their banks.
Into the ark: all you chiaroscuros and halftones,
you details, ornaments, and whims,
silly exceptions,
forgotten signs,
countless shades of the color gray,
play for play's sake,
and tears of mirth.

As far as the eye can see, there's water
and a hazy horizon.
Into the ark: plans for the distant future,
joy in difference,
admiration for the better man,
choice not narrowed down to one of two,
outworn scruples,
time to think it over,
and the belief that all of this
will still come in handy some day. 

For the sake of the children
that we still are,
fairy tales have happy endings.
That's the only finale that will do here, too.
The rain will stop,
the waves will subside,
the clouds will part
in the cleared-up sky,
and they'll be once more
what clouds overhead ought to be:
lofty and rather lighthearted
in their likeness to things
drying in the sun —
isles of bliss,
lambs,
cauliflowers,
diapers.

 

 

20. Trusting the Process

Fiona and Kaspa invited me to contribute a short essay about writing for their website during this month's "River of Stones." Here's what I sent them, and it's to be posted on "Writing Our Way Home" today. There've been some excellent, inspiring, and helpful essays this month - hope you'll read all of them!

TRUSTING THE PROCESS

January brings a new River of Stones to the literary and spiritual blogsphere, right at a time when our attention to the world around us might be flagging, along with our spirits. This challenge -- to write one small observation each day -- inspired large numbers of us last year and I have no doubts that it will be the same in 2012. For some, this is the beginning, or renewal, of a daily writing practice. For others, it's the first taste of what that might be like. But the real challenge for all of us, no matter how long we've been doing this, is how to keep going.

There are lots of reasons why we find it hard to continue writing every day, and I'm only going to talk about one of them here, but it's a big one. Somehow, as we read what others have done, and re-read our own efforts, a little voice in our head starts making comparisons and judgments, almost always at our own expense. Maybe we hoped for more comments, more support, more encouragement. Maybe what we've done falls short of our own expectations. Maybe we think other people's writing always tends to be more___________ -- fill in the blank -- creative, interesting, unusual, perceptive, clever, intelligent, poetic. Most of us, I think, have been in this kind of negative, paralyzing place whose sole purpose seems to be to tell us, "You aren't good enough, this is too painful, this is pointless...just stop."

Of course, all the arts can be problematic in this way: it doesn't matter whether we're writing small stones or a blog or a novel, or trying to practice the piano, or make a drawing every day. My worst crisis over my own work came in my mid-thirties, when I was mostly working in the fine arts. I had had some conventional "success" but was convinced I was missing something significant; that something inside me was holding me back. I became so discouraged and frustrated about art that I gave up painting and drawing for five years, but I was equally determined to find answers.

During that time I learned to meditate, and studied the writings and teachings of masters of Zen and Tibetan Buddhism, Hinduism, and the contemplatives and mystics of my own Christian tradition. There were common threads, one of which was mindfulness and attentiveness to the present moment. With the experience of meditation as a practice, I gradually found a new way, which still continues to deepen twenty-five years later. The point of making art, I gradually realized, is not the finished piece of writing or art and the praise we hope to receive for it, but the process of creation and what it teaches us.

Shunryu Suzuki helped me a great deal. I still remember the first time I read his essay, "The Marrow of Zen," in Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind, in which he wrote:

...almost all of us want to be the best horse. if it is impossible to be the best one, we want to be second best. This, I think, is the usual understanding of this story, and of Zen. You may think that when you sit in zazen you will find out whether you are one of the best horses or one of the worst ones. Here, however, there is a misunderstanding of Zen. If you think the aim of Zen practice is to train you to become one of the best horses, you will have a big problem. This is not the right understanding. If you practice Zen in the right way it does not matter whether you are the best horse or the worst one...

--

If you study calligraphy you will find that those who are not so clever usually become the best calligraphers. Those who are very clever with their hands often encounter great difficulty after they have reached a certain stage. This is also true in art and in Zen. It is true in life.

--

The awareness that you are here, right now, is the ultimate fact...In continuous practice, under a series of agreeable and disagreeable situations, you will realize the marrow of Zen and acquire its true strength.

Eventually, I began again. I learned not to judge my work, or continually compare it to others: just to do it, and let it go, moving on to the next piece of art or writing. It's one thing to be inspired, and to study work we admire, and quite another to allow our expectations and fragile ego to rule us. In meditation we follow our breath, noticing thoughts as they arise but not judging them, and then we let them go. We try to do this, we fail over and over, but we continue practicing anyway. Likewise, a daily writing practice is an opportunity to observe, think, and write to the best of our best ability right now, and then let that work go without judging, simply moving on to the next day, the next small stone. It's important to have faith in the process and its ability to teach us. That's difficult at the beginning, but -- please trust me -- it gets easier.

We are all meant to be creative beings; I firmly believe this is a big part of why we are here. Eventually, changes are wrought within us as we practice being observant, mindful, and creative. These changes have almost nothing to do with "success" in the eyes of the world, and everything to do with the contentment and peace and quiet wisdom that come from feeling our deep connection to everything around us. There is no hierarchy or limit to this potential; it is within each and every one of us. Even in the face of great difficulties, knowledge of our deeper selves -- including our own inherent creativity which is one with the inexhaustible creativity of the universe -- sustains us, and is a great gift which we both receive and give.

Writing for the World,or Within a Culture?

I wanted to suggest this thought-provoking article by Tim Parks, "Writing Adrift in the World," which speaks about problems and choices faced by contemporary young novelists. Parks addresses both the issue of writing fiction set in the world at large, for a world audience vs. writing from within one's own cultural and language tradition, and the question of how we are being affected by technology and the reading of media like blogs. I wonder what readers here may have to say about his comments, since so many of you are avid, lifelong writers and readers who move easily in and out of the worlds he describes. I'd love to hear from you after you read it.

Rueful

In other houses, other workshops, other cafés, behind the visible or invisible doors of their solitude, people have been writing this morning. Beautiful sentences have emerged, and hang now on the shredded remains of burst chrysalides, slowly opening and closing their drying wings.

Meeting Marly, and some memories

On Monday, J. and I drove two valleys east from my father's home, which took us from the Chenango to the Unadilla, and then to the beautiful valley which holds Otsego Lake, from which the north branch of the Susquehanna arises. That's a mouthful of Iroquois names, isn't it? All I can do to convey the beauty of the'se places is to post a few photographs, but this piece of earth is the landscape that's forever imprinted on my mind and soul.

Our first stop was a field not far from my father's. We needed photographs of sheep in fields that looked somewhat like rural England, for a theater poster we're designing. The sheep obliged.

On the way, I wanted to take a photo of this abandoned general store in South Edmeston, NY, one of several tiny villages we passed through on the way -- and home, in recent years, to a thriving yogurt factory that's providing desperately-needed employment in this hard-hit rural area.

Then we continued over the hills to Cooperstown. The town, as usual in the summer, was crawling with tourists, especially on the main street where we parked, not far from the Baseball Hall of Fame. Parents with kids, little league teams in uniforms, nostalgic elders...and a street of historic buildings containing shops selling baseball souvenirs and memorabilia of every variety.

We ate lunch at a small cafe, where there was a pile of magazines on the table. I opened up a copy of The Christian Century, a liberal magazine I used to read, and was pleased to see a poem by Jill Alexander Essbaum...After lunch, J. took off to take some photographs, and I walked down to my favorite landing to gaze out at the lake for a little while. This is the site of Council Rock, a famous meeting place for the Iroquois. No one else was there. I stood and watched the lake, and then walked around the shoreline a short distance. The north branch of the Susquehanna River is the outlet of Otsego Lake, and begins right here as a mere brook.

 

I thought about my own history in this town, Cooperstown, named for its famous writer, James Fenimore Cooper, who called the lake "Glimmerglass." We came here fairly often when I was a child, to visit the Farmer's Museum or Indian Museum, or have lunch at the Otesaga Hotel. Here's a photo of me there, taken, um, a lot of years ago!

Later, as a naturalist/artist/exhibit coordinator for one of New York State's environmental education centers, I came here to take a summer course given my the New York State Historical Museum, in Fenimore House, and met a man I'd later marry: he was an artist/blacksmith working at the Farmer's Museum. for the next two years I travelled back and forth over these hills very often, deepening my affection for the landscape and Cooperstown itself, and enlarging my familiarity with the trickiest spots on the icy, drifted winter roads. With him I moved to New England; my transplantation there would survive, but our brief marriage did not.

 

Much more recently, J. and I had spent long days and nights here, in and out of the Cooperstown hospital -- a teaching hospital that's the best in central New York -- during my mother's surgery and final illness. There was a lot going through my head as I looked out at the lake.

But then I climbed back up to street level, and rang the bell at Marly Youmans' house. Within minutes, we were talking like old friends. The reason for the visit was to meet face-to-face, and ostensibly, to talk about Marly's book-length epic poem, "Thaliad," which my press Phoenicia will be publishing at the end of 2011. We got to that after, well, a couple of hours...

Marly, who -- no surprise -- is delightful, intelligent, articulate, funny, and warm, introduced me to her children, and showed me her house (which is very old) and some brand-new books (by Clive Hicks-Jenkins and a group of poets including herself and Dave Bonta -- on the floor in this picture). Clive's original artwork for Marly's book, Val/Orson, hangs in her front hallway.

Jonathan arrived, and after tea and bowls of freshly-picked raspberries with cream (whipping cream!) and sugar - what a treat! - we inscribed and exchanged books (a copy of my biography of Bishop Gene Robinson, and Marly's latest poetry collection, "The Throne of Psyche) and walked to the Episcopal Church, where J. took pictures of the Tiffany windows and Marly told me the history of the building, in which James Fenimore Cooper and his family figured heavily. They're all buried in the churchyard, and commemorated in stained glass.

Then sadly, it was time to leave, for we had further destinations and many miles to go. We gave Marly three ripe Pennsylvania peaches - she's a Southern girl, after all! - and took a few pictures to commemorate the first of what we hope will be many future get-togethers. We liked each other a lot. Can you tell? And although we don't really look that much alike, we sure do in this picture. Kind of uncanny. Thank you, Marly, and thank you, Cooperstown, for being the catalysts for this journey backward and forward!

(Marly has another photo, and some local lore, on her own blog today.)

Genius loci

Gustave Courbet, 1849

"Genius loci, the spirit of place, which, like an unbidden bolt of recognition, transforms a landscape, a street corner into 'inscape,' into a reorientation of awareness. Snow was blowing and drifting in a white fog. The rural road simply vanished. My wife, whose sagacity of heart, radiant good sense and unspoken perceptions are incomparable, drove parallel with what we could make out of fence posts. At moments even these blanked out in a white tumult. Suddenly the February blizzard cleared. A cold brilliance washed the air. We edged the car across the fields back to a paved road and into woods. A gently tortuous descent led from the plateau. On either side, like scarred walls, towered the cliffs painted time and time again by Courbet in this corner of the Franche-Comté. A breach opened in the larch, pale birch and black pine. Zara and I stopped breathless. Below us, in the perfectly rounded cusp of the hills, traversed by a stream whose crystal voices reached us even far above, lay a hamlet. Its rust-coloured and snow-blown roofs, squat church-tower and two small chateaux -- the one ramshackled and Second Empire, the other a pure marvel of a seventeenth-eighteenth century logis and circular donjon -- composed a compact, earth-bound yet also mirage-like ensemble. We were struck mute with wonder. The church tower rang its hour as we crossed the low stone bridge, its querulous chime somehow answered by the toss of silver-white and green-ochre (Courbet's palette) of water across lustrous stones. I knew at once that there would be for me no greater perfection anywhere, that I had stumbled on home."

George Steiner, Errata (1997)

Apparently, Errata is not a typical book by Steiner; it's the closest he comes to memoir and autobiography. Within this book, even this chapter doesn't seem typical because here he stops being a critic or professor, and edges toward pure writing, some of which is very beautiful. I recently finished "The Death of Tragedy" -- which came out of his doctoral thesis -- and am now halfway through this one, written quite late in his long and still-continuing life. Steiner can be maddening, as all brilliant people sometimes are, and he is also flamboyant -- a criticism that was penned on one of his first papers at university. But he shares a concern for philosophy, the art and creativity, and the classics -- for humanism in general -- and writes about those things very well indeed.

I've been amused that since writing the title of this post, this morning, I've had Anton Bruckner's "Locus iste" ("This place") stuck in my head. Steiner would probably approve, though that one's a bit of a stretch, even for him!

 

real, virtual and the thorny liminal

In which we muse about summer, long weekends, friends, place, social networks and blogging...

A lazy holiday weekend; even the sun agrees. He hides behind clouds for a while, then emerges like a charismatic politician entering a room, turning the leaves from olive to bright chartreuse, only to take his leave just as suddenly. It was supposed to rain on Sunday, but instead turned very hot, the day saved by a strong breeze. I biked down to the cathedral with J., and afterward we ate lunch together in the underground. I stayed behind to shop for a new pair of sandals -- my old ones split across the sole when I began walking on them this spring -- and finally found a new pair that I hope will last as long as their predecessors. The city is full of tourists, here for the jazz festival, wandering about looking hot and happy and a bit dazed. I remember how that was.

On Friday, Canada Day, I did odds and ends around the apartment -- a general bathroom and refrigerator cleaning, some work with the plants on the terrace, some piano playing. In the afternoon a friend came over and after discussing textiles and sewing we all went out to buy sushi and beer (Canadian, of course!) and had a party on our terrace. Everyone in the city, it seemed, was either on their balcony or terrace or in one of the parks: we've all been starved for hot weather and real summer.

On Saturday we cut the hedge in front of the building, and as we worked I thought about how differently I feel now than the first few times we did this. I remember feeling shy out on the street, how difficult it was to cope with speaking French to passers-by or to our first-floor neighbor who always works with us. I felt awkward and uncomfortable, eager to please but worried about offending and making mistakes: a rookie, a freshman, an American interloper in this French neighborhood. In fact, our neighbor -- all our neighbors, actually -- have been extremely kind and welcoming, but it has taken longer, all these five years, really, to begin to feel part of a larger community within the neighborhood. Yesterday, not only did I notice how comfortable I felt being in my neighborhood, in front of my home, but one of my gardener friends came by as we were working and he ended up staying for quite a while, chatting, watering my plants, meeting our cat, talking about garden plans. A woman asked questions, which I easily understood, and I was able to answer her in French. I'm becoming, somehow, incredibly, local.

Afterward we sat on the terrace with our neighbor, talking and drinking wine, and she told us how difficult the transition had been for her when she moved, twenty-five years ago, from a big house outside Quebec City to a small Montreal apartment with her husband and young daughter. We talked about letting go of material things, about the odd sentimental attachments that had nothing to do with monetary value, about the grief and depression that follows such a life-shift. and then, about Montreal, and the way the city has seduced us, and made us its lovers. And in the cooler evening we biked to my garden to water it, and ended up sitting with two of the other gardeners, talking and telling life-stories until well after dark. People are so much less guarded here, so much more direct and honest. If you want to make friends, it's not hard.

I've been a bit less active online this spring and summer, and one of the main reasons is that I've been giving more energy to real-life relationships like these, including my relationship with this physical place. I've realized that Facebook, useful as it is for quick news, for publicity, and keeping in touch with a wide variety of acquaintences, is often unsatisfying (even depressing) for me while taking up a lot of time. And while it's definitely possible to do excellent short-form writing, designed for FB or Twitter, that's only an occasional focus. I've decided to continue my social-network presence but I don't want to be distracted from what I want to give as well as receive: genuineness, depth, and warmth. I've never had that problem with the blog or with the friendshps that have come out of it: they are real, and satisfying, and even when there isn't a mutual exchange I know that I'm holding myself to a higher standard of thought, writing, and interaction. That matters to me.

The sun goes in and out of clouds, as we all do, but watching it happen on a video is nothing like feeling it on your skin. Words, though, can make us feel just about everything. I want to feel my real life, so that that I can write about it in words.

Poems from the via negativa

Nic Sebastian's new chapbook, Dark and Like a Web: Brief Notes On and To the Divine, edited by yours truly, has just been published under the Nanopress model that Nic invented. Under this type of publishing, the author partners with an editor to work closely on the manuscript until it is ready for self-publication. The book is then made available in various forms, including an online edition with all the poems in written and audio form, an e-book, a free .pdf download,  and an inexpensive print edition and audio CD sold at cost through Lulu. The goal of nanopress publishing is primarily to get the poems into the hands (and ears) of as many readers as possible -- and of course it helps if the author (and editor) have established online presences and the ability to self-publish a quality book in all these forms. What I'm doing at Phoenicia Publishing is, of course, different, and, like the authors I work with, our goals are somewhat different too. I was glad to participate in this project with Nic. As in my work with Dave Bonta and all the wonderful writers at qarrtsiluni, I think we all need to cooperate and experiment with various forms of publishing in a new environment, and to use the web and new technologies creatively for the benefit of both writers and readers.

When Nic first asked me to edit these poems,  I was excited because they spoke to me personally, and were already close to being ready for publication. Actually, I would have been happy to publish the chapbook at Phoenicia. These are "via negativa" poems, looking at the divine obliquely, and through obscurity -- and that makes sense to me. The book includes process notes from both Nic and me, and an explanation of how we came up with "Broiled Fish and Honeycomb Nanopress." Here's just one of many favorite poems from the collection, but I urge you to read the whole chapbook, where a greater meaning emerges as one poem and one experience is followed by another.

the girl and the hours

the girl lives in an iron shack
her homeland is red
it is dry the passing of the first hour is rich
blue salt, the second
emerald oboe

the girl pulls up
a rough wooden chair
in hot wind

she observes the sleek hours
passing in single file before her
on a catwalk

one is smoking vermillion
another dream black and muscled
dark whale song

the striding hours are elegant
they have a fine sense of color
and they are not afraid

the girl watches deeply
under constant sun, never feels
she is alone

This was an interesting project for me as an independent editor with no real stake in the final product other than trying to help make the book as good as it could be. As each project does, I felt like it taught me a lot and moved me forward in my understanding of what we're doing as writers and editors -- and I tried to talk about that in my editor's note, part of which appears below: 

I was impressed throughout by how well Nic knew her work and herself. When I asked, “why this particular word,” or “what exactly were you trying to express here” or “I’m not sure about this repetition, what do you think?” she had an answer; she knew what she was doing and reaching for. I also tried to give clear reasons for my own reservations and suggestions. Because of this, it became quite easy to make decisions about improvements. Some were obvious. Others, much more subjective. But because neither one of us was digging in, we never got to an impasse; we listened, knowing that the shared goal was to make the chapbook as good as it could be. I strongly believe that the editor’s role should, in the end, appear as transparent as possible, and that a successful project is one which not only reflects the author’s original vision and voice, but concentrates it.

But that’s only one side of the story.

When we create, I think we all long for the close reading, the deeply attentive listener or viewer. Making our work public is an act of courage, risking not only dismissal or rejection, but also intimacy. Editing, by its very nature, requires an intimate engagement with the text, closer perhaps than anyone’s but the author. I see that intimacy as both a responsibility and a great privilege.

I’m changed each time I enter deeply into the words and world of other writers who have asked me to edit their work. Certain phrases and ideas enter me, and they stay. In one of my favorite poems in this collection, Nic asks, “how have you sharpened/into this thin bright hook/pulling me after you still/as though you were some great moon and I/some helpless tide.” This stunning image speaks equally to me about the pull of the divine, and the pull of the creative impulse, two forces not so separate as they may seem."

A Deficit of Consonants

Poems - a lot of poems - come across this virtual desk. Some I need to read with extreme attention, because my advice or input or decision is needed; some, often written by friends, feel like gifts during my day. Others - the majority - are part of the large volume of words that pass in front of my eyes, sifting and tossing but eventually falling like bits of colored paper drifting from skyscraper windows during a parade. My words, too, are part of that constant fluttering: some catching the light for a brief moment before coming to their own rest, lost among so many others.

Today, unaware, I read a poem that utterly devastated me. It wasn't a good poem. It simply sliced me, the way a sheet of paper turns into a thin, efficient blade and cuts the side of a finger.

A friend quotes W.S. Merwin, in conversation with Bill Moyers:

"I think poetry's about what can't be said. And I think that language emerges out of what could not be said. Out of this desperate desire to utter something, to express something inexpressible. Probably grief. Maybe something else. You know, you see a silent photograph of an Iraqi woman whose husband or son or brother has just been killed by an explosion. And you know that if you could hear, you would be hearing one long vowel of grief. Just senseless, meaningless vowel of grief. And that's the beginning of language right there.

Inexpressible sound. And it's antisocial. It's destructive. It's utterly painful beyond expression. And the consonants are the attempts to break it, to control it, to do something with it. And I think that's how language emerged."

Poetry is about what's can't be said: yes, often true. And we need poetry, art, music to try to express the rawness of our pain more often, I think, than our joy. We enter the realm of art full of emotion, need, and desire, wanting to say something about ourselves, about existence, about what has happened to us or what we've seen happening to others.

But if poetry is the language that emerges from inexpressible sound, we must learn that handling words is like handling knives. Becoming masterful often means saying less, or coming at the subject obliquely: the slant light of late afternoon picking out one falling shred of paper and setting it aflame during its flight to earth. Becoming a master of oneself as well as the words.

The amateur and the egotist, however, say everything. Their work has the capacity - perhaps even the intent - to violate rather than move us, like the graphic news photograph on the front page that can now never be erased from our mind.

It was safer, perhaps, before the internet gave everyone a platform from which to dump their buckets of vowels.

 

Cassandra in words (and pictures) at The House of Words

The indefatigable Marly Youmans has just published the first part of a two-part interview with me at her blog, "The palace at 2:00 am," illustrated with (to my surprise) some of my own paintings. In the interview, we talk about the strengths of small-press publishing, and what makes it satisfying to a creative person like me, even though it's expensive and time-consuming. Hope you'll take a look. And when you do, be sure to go back and read some of the previous posts in Marly's recent series, "The House of Words," -- they are all fascinating takes on writing and publishing by different people who are involved first-hand.