I didn't feel like writing yesterday, for a while i slammed away at the keyboard trying to talk about beer. How i really, really like it and my excitement for the various seasonal brews available. But its hard to find inspiration to write about beer when I'm sipping coffee and the time for work looms ahead. I was saved from a tragic, rambling, post when my 9 month old woke up in need of attention and nourishment. Hence a poem from the my archives. A poem i suppose I'm not to fond of on closer inspection. I read it a few times yesterday and this morning and have decided that I'm not sure if the poetry I've saved is poetry worth sharing.
I haven't spent a lot of time in that area lately, poetry. I sit to write and nothing emerges. I used to jot down lines and thoughts in a poetic form during church sermons but even then I've lost the natural instinct for it. Poets, like most writers getting paid for their writing, I'm sure, are crafts-people. What they do takes a large degree of discipline and work and an infinite number of revisions and drafts to bring a poem to a place that is acceptable and genuine. There is a stark irony there, of course, of revising to bring out the genuine qualities of a poem and of course the danger is that the very aspect that makes poetry so accessible--genuine, candid, and captivating--is edited out in the long run and the poet must return to the original thought and start again. How often that happens with writing as well.
I have never been a writer who spends a lot of time with poetry (obviously!), preferring, instead, to let the first draft, the original inspiration, stand on its own. The only thing i change is the rhythm. As a consequence, i discovered yesterday morning, while i fed my son, that the poems i have saved are somewhat flat. But, i generally think that of most of my writing after a time has past. So, i wonder, is writing timeless?
Always, the writing of today will be most accessible to the readers of today. As the writing ages and new readers are exposed to it, the writings qualities will either be exposed to prove it is a work that will span generations or not. Some books where not made to be read beyond the generation for which they were written. Some are works that remind us of the past and the human propensity for inflicting tragedy on the world around them. Others are works of survival and the tenacity and enduring spirit of human nature. These are the kinds of books, essays, short stories, and poems that last. On these kinds of works we've built a literary tradition, a cannon, on which instructors, teachers, and professors build literary education. I feel that my literary education was based far to much into the now. I have read books from the past, and spent a great deal of time with books written far before i was born. But actual study and literary criticism is lacking.
What i got was an invitation to go it based on the cultural paradigm of my generation which happens to be a knee jerk reaction away from the influence and traditions of the paradigm my parents live in. As i look at my poetry the tradition of great poets is lacking. The influence of Keats and Tennyson, Shakespeare, Whitman, Emerson, Eliot...even my prose, while influenced strongly by great writers lacks a connection to a tradition of great writing.
My education failed to cultivate a knowledge of a tradition of writing. As a student i was even trained in such a way that I'm sure i would have resisted any attempt to level that tradition on my, my writing, and my naive attempts at prose and poetry. What i got instead was an introduction to the "lone wolf" method of self publishing, small presses, chat book poets, and subversive cultures of zines and pamphlets. What kind of bullshit is that for a student who wants and dreams to be a writer? But students don't really know, all they can do is trust the instructors point them in the right direction.
Education doesn't really happen in the classroom--it happens through experience.
No comments:
Post a Comment