pen ink river

In an essay whose title I know I have somewhere, Patricia Hampl says memoir as now practiced has its roots in poetry. She writes that “...the chaotic lyric impulse, not the smooth drive of plot, is the engine of memory. Flashes of half-forgotten moments flare up from their recesses…shards glinting in the dust. These are the materials of memoir, details that refuse to stay buried, demand habitation. They may be domesticated into a story, but the passion that begat them as images belongs to the wild night of poetry.”

More unexpected connections, revelations. I feel like everything of late is steering me away from linear narrative and toward the poetic. Next week, I start the Prose Poem course through Writers on the Net as well. Interesting, after so many years struggling and frustrated with short stories and the conventions of narrative fiction in general.; Of course, that said, I really feel like I don't at all know what I'm doing with poetry. But maybe that's the point -- if you are a poet, you don't need to study or learn anything. That there's an intuitive river of sound and meter and form that runs through you and you simply need to be open to paying attention to it.

In an essay whose title I know I have somewhere, Patricia Hampl says memoir as now practiced has its roots in poetry. She writes that “...the chaotic lyric impulse, not the smooth drive of plot, is the engine of memory. Flashes of half-forgotten moments flare up from their recesses…shards glinting in the dust. These are the materials of memoir, details that refuse to stay buried, demand habitation. They may be domesticated into a story, but the passion that begat them as images belongs to the wild night of poetry.”

More unexpected connections, revelations. I feel like everything of late is steering me away from linear narrative and toward the poetic. Next week, I start the Prose Poem course through Writers on the Net as well. Interesting, after so many years struggling and frustrated with short stories and the conventions of narrative fiction in general.; Of course, that said, I really feel like I don't at all know what I'm doing with poetry. But maybe that's the point -- if you are a poet, you don't need to study or learn anything. That there's an intuitive river of sound and meter and form that runs through you and you simply need to be open to paying attention to it.

Posted by peninkriver at 06:56 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

This morning, first thing, searched for a literary blogger mentioned in a Poets & Writers article this month. As is so often the case with the Web, one click leads to another and another and pretty soon I'm at Poetry Snark and Foetry reading of all the bad poetry being published and the nepotism in poetry contests and, just like that, my writing balloon bursts and becomes a shriveled mass of rubber in wrinkles on the floor. Who am I kidding? Something isn't right, is off, with this trying to be part of the writing profession, the writing life. Because why? I'm too old to play the game? Too uninterested and turned off by the academy and its inbred B.S.? Been there, done that even on the administrative side at Cornell; it's been a welcome forgetting of all the back scratching that goes on under the guise of collegiality and academic freedom in those less-than-hallowed halls. Oh yeah, I have the blogs but don't tell anyone about them. I'm working on the web site but to market what? my scribbling to myself? Days like this I'm not sure what I expected, what I expect. It's a grind, the market for creative work is shrinking, and I may be past my ability to suck up and play the who-you-know game. It would be far better to be in denial, slogging away, thinking that some day I'll get around the writing, someone will recognize my gifts, magically, mysteriously, my work will find its way out there, be published. But I stopped drinking that Kool-Aid a while back so, unfortunately, those delusions are long gone. I should simply go to the work -- I say that's what I want to do, how I want to operate. How to balance -- finding voices in a community outside you with being too isolated? I wonder: is the answer to find real people (as opposed to virtual, typed words on a screen) to hang out with?

Posted by Nancy Flynn at 11:32 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

These words of wisdom from Bob Haynes, the teacher in our on-line course through Writers on the Net about how poetry works. "A student in a class from a few years ago kept wanting to know what she needed to write decent poetry. I kept telling her that she needed a clean, healthy mind, and that I recommend she steer clear of prurient topics like sex and violence. Well, she was even confused by my comments until she finally told me that what she meant by "decent" was publishable. It seemed to me that these were two distinctly different questions. Maybe in the beginning, publishing is an exciting event. But after you've had a few hundred poems published, the excitement turns to disma. The editor takes the poem you inserted as filler to the submission rather than the important work you wanted the editor to notice. Publishing is seldom a validation. Editorial choices are a lot different than artistic choices. I believe validation can't really come from outside the poem."

Posted by Nancy Flynn at 11:51 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)