pen ink river

Sunday morning finds itself midway through a sky of cloud and pale white-gray. I'm in a similar place, betwixt between, waiting to leave my hideout to hole up in one in a hotel instead. Wrote about winter this morning, this winter, what strangeness and, in some ways, emotional hell it has been. Finished an essay by Louise Gluck and, yet again, felt what? disgusted? bored? basically not that interested in her analysis of poems by Oppen, Berryman and T.S. Eliot. Do I brush off work like this because I wish I'd been able to be one of the anointed, part of the academic, scholarly life? But, if I'm honest with myself, if I look deeply and see what moves me, it was never that, never critiquing literature. Under the Oberlin Buddhist influence, my writing shifted pretty early on to a preoccupation with questions of the spirit. I suppose I could blame this on an influence of the Beats, the San Francisco scene meets Whole Earth Catalog and Mother Earth News. But Rilke was there too, and Thomas Pynchon. And Lao Tzu's Tao te Ching. I have long been a meaning-seeker, a scribbler striving to understand my place in this life. Why would that change now, at 50? Why would I be envious at all of those who pontificate from the dais of the academy? I have never been someone who wanted to kowtow to that, to play to the posturing and all the political games. It was bad enough when I worked at Cornell.

More and more, I guess I just want to express myself. To take up my fountain pens, the Aurora with its black ink, the Conklin with blue-black and a beveled barrel, the sleek green Waterman, present to myself upon my first real publication of a short story. I want to take them up and try for my own heroic witness to how we live, we dream, we die. Yeah, technique is important and I have been a good doobie, into the classroom trenches, learning about anaphora and disgresio, the need for space and breath and even silence in a poem. Reading essays by established—maybe even Establishment—poets and writers, I have to keep in mind that churning out thoughts and words is what they are doing to earn their livings. To keep up appearances. To play the writerly academic game. To get paid. I wonder how many would envy me my luxury of time, tall trees, and quiet. I wonder how many would trade to sit at my cherry desk with a palette of filled fountain pens. I wonder how many are honest, how many even care to know their truest selves.

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Man, do I need a prayer, an incantation, words I can offer up to Polyhymnia, the muse in charge of songs to the gods, hell, maybe even the other muses in charge of writing as well—Calliope, Erato, Euterpe, Melpomene, and Thalia. Please send inspiration. In a hurry. Soon. My interest is waning, energy flagging, the desire to do this work falling way behind hormones raging. I'm ready to throw in the proverbial towel, start a journal burn bonfire and walk away. This can't be this hard. I must be making it so. I wonder, will these muses respond to this?

This writing life—with its days of showing up at the page to seek words that speak my version of what’s true—is what I said I wanted. Now that it’s mine, help me maintain the balance I too regularly ignore or forget. Guide me away from the “all or nothing” mentality I often assume and toward acceptance—that who I am and what concerns me are viable wellsprings for my art. Keep me in the attitude of beginner, so necessary to remaining open to the muse. At the same time, encourage the confidence, peppered with a touch of authority, that I've earned from these years of diligent work.

Urge me toward greater productivity, focus, and discipline while never losing sight of the open mind and heart required for truth in art. Help me sustain interest in projects; grace me with the wisdom to move on when the work no longer brings joy. Grant me bravery and tenacity in the face of the mercurial subjectivity and rejection that dominates this writing profession. And periodically remind me to lower my expectations and be kinder to myself than I think I should be. Because only in realizing there is nothing wrong with me, that my life is fine, even perfect, can I say yes to the voice that is writing and to life.

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...according to the late Susan Sontag in an essay, The Truth of Fiction Evokes Our Common Humanity:

"Love words. Agonize over sentences. And pay attention to the world...Be serious. By which I [mean]: Never be cynical. And which doesn't preclude being funny. And if you'll allow me one more: Take care to be born at a time when it was likely you could still be exalted and influenced by Dostoevsky and Tolstoy and Chekhov...The writers who matter most to us are those who enlarge our consciences and our sympathies and our knowledge."

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The temperature dips into arctic chill territory for this part of the world and I can feel it, this house with corners that leak like a seive. I change the desk blotter this morning—the old one ratty with cat footprints and watermarks—and re-read the card I keep handy (rarely look at), Kerouac's essentials for modern prose. Some fun, funky stuff. Keep track every day the date emblazoned in yr morning and Like Proust, be an old teahead of time. Teahead, there's a word you don't see that often these days.

Then I re-read Ginsberg's Mind Writing Slogans the doug fir branches and wind chimes a chorus behind his words with the rousing wind. There is some comfort in knowing how many (most?) writers struggle. To be reminded of these words from John Keats:

"What quality went to form a man of achievement, especially in literature?...Negative capability, that is, when a man is capable of being in uncertainties, mysteries, doubts, without any irritable reaching after fact & reason."

That's what my week has been: an irritable reaching. Can I only recognize it now seeing Keats' words? Seems every day I came to my writing desk wanting objectivity and conclusions, resolutions and recognition, to know, once and for all, what is good, when the work is done, is good enough. In the pea soup of my solitude and my hormones, I not only lose sight of but downright give up on the mystery. Everything is mistake and aggravation. Nothing sets or settles right. I suppose these ups and downs are inevitable, come with the territory. But it sure does a body ill to sit here day in and out and feel worthless, useless, talentless, uninspired, soulless. With me it isn't so much negative capability as negative incapacitation. Irrational striving. As if I can bend the forces of creativity, hell, even the universe to my own petty tyrannical will. You think by now I'd recognize the signs and be able to better deal with this. You think by now I'd remember the pattern and wake up.

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Clipped out of a New Yorker issue a few years back. Now that I own all the back issues on CD I suppose I can find the actual publication date! Questions and maybe a few answers for all of us striving to work with words.

Words

by Venus Khoury-Ghata


Where do words come from?
from what rubbing of sounds are they born
on what flint do they light their wicks
what winds brought them into our mouths

Their past is the rustling of stifled silences
the trumpeting of molten elements
the grunting of stagnant waters

Sometimes
they grip each other with a cry
expand into lamentations
become mist on the windows of dead houses
crystallize into chips of grief on dead lips
attach themselves to a fallen star
dig their hole in nothingness
breathe out strayed souls

Words are rocky tears
the keys to the first doors
they grumble in caverns
lend their ruckus to storms
their silence to bread that's ovened alive

(Translated, from the French, by Marilyn Hacker)

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From Sam Hamill’s editorial on the Poets Against War web site:

“One thing we as poets can do is build stronger intercultural bridges. The better we know and talk with one another, locally and internationally, the more difficult misunderstanding becomes. Poetry is an important bridge. Our poetry absolutely blossomed in the last century, in a very large part thanks to the influence of poetry from all over the world. That cross-pollination is essential to us and to our allied poets abroad. We need to know what every “they" have to say. We need to reaffirm ancient values and the practice of compassion. We need to remind people lost in materialist culture that, yes, poetry matters—just as it always has. Maybe even more, because it crosses boundaries more efficiently than ever before. And the real subject of poetry is character."

Hamill also writes:

“Success? Success is one man laying down the gun. Success is one human being finding one breath of insight or solace or compassion through a poem. Success is a way of life, not a product...Tides begin to change one drop of water at a time."

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Just finished a superb novel, The Gardens of Kyoto by Kate Walbert. It was such a satisfying, lyrically smart, rich, engaging, and compelling read. One of those novels you close with a sigh and hope you remember to find the time to read one day again.

This passage particularly spoke to me, seemed to offer up advice about finding audience for our writing, locating and focusing on your own particular someone, out there listening, no matter if imagined, living or dead:

"There was only one thing Randall insisted I remember about the art of dramatic presentation. It was the first rule of thumb, what I would have to understand if I were going to understand anything at all. You speak, he told me, to an audience of one—a solitary listener to whom you direct your presentation, to whom you project your voice in the telling; a person whom you picture as you confide."

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From Ralph Waldo Emerson:

"Finish every day and be done with it. You have done what you could; some blunders and absurdities crept in; forget them as soon as you can. Tomorrow is a new day. You shall begin it serenely and with too high a spirit to be encumbered with your old nonsense."

Amen!

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Over lunch at the brewpub, a discussion of the constant stress of having an uncompleted project hanging over one's head. So the just do it motto must be resurrected, return to guide the work of my days. I'm sure parades of wise writers, artists, other creative types before me have written about their struggles to lasso the work, do it more like a job, when the impetus, energy, inspiration for a project lag, maybe even fail. Now, with the web site project, done, I have to return to the project about G. , to make my morning to-do lists be less about errands to the post office and dry cleaners and more about finishing the numerous rough drafts. Yeah, we all know "finished" is a subjective word in this business. But there has to be a way to see this work to its end, to follow the paths I've already started, a few tricks to make this feel less-than-hard. Is it simply a balancing act between force and heartfelt willingness? A mantra I can chant before I greet the page or keyboard each day? Something like begin, focus, complete, then move on?

I guess I often want the daily work on a project, the writing itself to feel sparking and alive, zesty with urgency and that dirty word: inspiration. But I know it doesn't work like that and that's what I'm up against now, continuing in spite of flagging enthusiasm, a sense that the work as originally envisioned can never be what I wanted it to be. I so often zero in on the negative and the downbeat rather than remember to celebrate what turns up.

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Does that count as writing? I don't think so. But today it was necessary, my collating, almost secretarial efforts to see what, if anything, can emerge from one, two, hell, almost eight years of sitting here, writing, talking to myself I thought but maybe just maybe the ramblings are something others would want to read. I probably have more than 100 pages of material, seriously in need of editing of course. But still, that's some mighty keyboarding fingers, spewing out thought after thought, observation upon observation. Isn't that what this life is about, each day finding a tactic, a slant, an urge and an edge as you move forward, one letter, word, sentence, paragraph at a time? With a huge dollop of merciless self-editing, of course. Imagine what the girl could accomplish if she really put her mind to something she cared about, felt passionate about, believed in.

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A few months ago I read some sage advice in "Writing Without Teachers" by Peter Elbow.

He says "to improve your writing you don't need advice about what changes to make; you don't need theories of what is good and bad writing. You need movies of people's minds while they read your words. But you need this for a sustain period of time -- at least 2 or 3 months. And you need to get the experience of not just 2 people but at least 6 or 7. And you need to keep getting it from the same people so that they get better at transmitting their experience and you get better at hearing them. And you must writing something EVERY week...if you only learn how people perceive and experience words you are satisfied with, you are missing a crucial area of learning."

This argues for sharing one's messy first, second, and third drafts, doesn't it?

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A friend sent me an e-mail from the Hope Flowers school in Bethlehem, in Israel. I love the name -- Hope Flowers. I'd like to name a character that. What would Hope Flowers be like? Let's see. She's be a seeker I think. Someone interested in growing and changing. She'd either be hopeful like her name -- no, that's too easy. I think she'd be more likely to rebel against the hope part of her name some time in her life, be downbeat and depressive and curmudgeonly. Can women be curmudgeonly?

She'd wear dresses from the 1950s, bought at thrift stores, in loud, vibrant prints that show off her uncommonly tiny waist. She'd either wear tiny flats in brightly colored leather, again bought at thrift shops if possible to color-coordinate with her dresses. OR she's be in those lace-up Doc Marten boots with the only bit of color on her feet the shoelaces. I think she's younger than me, maybe 36, or 37, which would make her born in the late 1960s. She's not from where I grew up, in northeastern Pennsylvania. I want to make her a California child of flower children but maybe that's too obvious and would then imply one of her parents changed her/his last name to be "flowers." That isn't improbable. Working at the co-op I've run into a Twinkle and a Greenpeace and Jennifer Juniper. She could be Hope Flowers of Millbrook, New York. There were plenty of wild-eyed, acid-crazed hippies running around up there. Maybe I'll move her to Meander, though, the town in NE Pa that I use in my other stories. She's there because she met Miles Malloy in New York City when he had that job moving sculptures to/from the temporary MOMA in Queens and then back to the new MOMA in midtown.. Miles, son of my main character, Irene. The one who has moved back to her hometown because she inherited her grandmother's house.

Hope wouldn't be typical for her generation. She's prefer the music of her parents, maybe she inherited their LP collection when they died in a car crash or moved to Vancouver, BC? Hope has a brother. Let's call him Seymour. Seymour Flowers. Is that too literal, too J.D. Salinger, too gay? What about Percy instead? I'll have to think more about that.

What does Hope do now? She's some kind of artist. She makes photo album collages out of photographs she finds in junk stores, past generations of anonymous family members no one could remember or ever knew the name of, sent off with the auctioneer when they were getting ready for the esate sale? Hope finds them for cheap in dusty corners of secondhand shops. If she's lucky and finds an intact album, she's careful in the way she disassembles it, in tne the stories she calligraphs below the photos on every page. It's like she's running a rescue operation, a safe haven shelter for lost, abandoned souls. The eyes are the windows of the soul, Hope often says. She uses colored pencils to color in every person in every photograph's eyes. Sometimes their eyes are colors you don't see on real people in real life. That doesn't matter to Hope.

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What marks the artist is his power to shape the material of the pain we all have.

--Lionel Trilling

Perhaps someday everyone will have neurosis.

--Vincent van Gogh

It is not work that kills men; it is worry. Worry is rust upon the blade.

--Henry Ward Beecher

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Another Friday. February. Second month into 2006. I filled the morning with cutting and pasting drafts of writing I've been doing for the past year—memoir bits and pieces about G., poetry, prose poems—into a single document. Up to 50 pages, needing edits of course but at least this way I have them all in a single file, a place to start. And, another 20+ things I've written that aren't quite right as they are but have enough seeds in them to work with, revise them into something more polished and (hopefully) publishable. I think finding any common threads that may exist between these pieces and looking at them as a whole will give the work both structure and added momentum.

It is always a surprise to see how much I've been writing, how much I've written. Yeah, it's all over the map, and a bunch of it is raw and rough, a first pass to help me find my subject, sort my way through emotions as well as words. But getting it down, having a place to start in that isn't the empty-page beginning—as I've learned over the years of doing this, that isn't a bad strategy for me.

One day at a time. One text at a time. One book to focus on at a time.

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A prose poem made out of bits of ordinary, daily life.

Poem: "Change" by Louis Jenkins from The Winter Road . © Holy Cow! Press.

Change

All those things that have gone from your life, moon boots, TV
trays, and the Soviet Union, that seem to have vanished, are
really only changed, dinosaurs did not disappear from the earth
but evolved into birds and crock pots became bread makers.
Everything around you changes. It seems at times (only for a
moment) that your wife, the woman you love, might actually be
your first wife in another form. It's a thought not to be pursued.
... Nothing is the same as it used to be. Except you, of course,
You haven't changed ... well, slowed down a bit, perhaps. It's
more difficult nowadays to deal with the speed of change, dis-
turbing to suddenly find yourself brushing your teeth with what
appears to be a flashlight. But essentially you are the same as
ever, constant in your instability.

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Can it begin as simply as that? Is this how to find my way to writing, to a poem? Heading home, Wednesday morning, seeking inspiration, what gets noticed in the moments:

—The sun a white bright a hole in the clouds that looked like a cover of shredded cotton, slowly burned away.

—The road surface dry, whirr of tires on asphalt, and the iridescent green of the iris, tulip, berry, and grass fields along the highway after a month of soaking in wet.

—Puddles and more than clouds are reflected in them for the first time in weeks: muddy sheep, the branches of a hazlenut, every-which-way raspberry canes.

—How in one day, the vistas that are the wide, fertile Willamette Valley are back. Foothills of the Cascades, peeking up peaks, snow-capped of course. The Coast Range too, the entire valley with its mountains on either side, three-dimensional and shimmering.

—Everything made by humans at exits, along the side of the road—whether shopping, food, gas, or motels—all chains, all ugly, all the same.

—Inside the car, I can pretend there is still beauty and hope. Woo sanctuary when I dial the iPod's wheel, settle on Led Zeppelin II. A favorite from in 8th grade so the music is in my cells almost, that familiar. Listening to the words, I realize how many are sexual and wonder, did I know that back then or just feel it, visceral and unstated, adolescent hormones astir?

—Which then leads to reflections on when I ever felt truly happy. Long ago times in the foolish flush of new love? Before all the hard knocks and disappointments? And did I decide, consciously, to give all that up or it just happened with this living of a life, day after ordinary day?

—And does everyone else feel this way at one time in their lives or are people and their emotional responses to events, to people in their lives, to emotion, economically, socially, and culturally determined?

—Feeling momentarily cheered by the existence of one property, south of Salem, a haphazard collection of algae-greened trailers and wooden outbuildings, pens for animals perhaps, really quite beaten down. But still, in black spray paint letters on the side of one trailer facing the highway, something to the effect of "Don't bother asking, not for sale." Millions rejected in favor of what? principle? tradition? home?

—The rest of the day, the only time I spoke to another flesh-and-blood person was when I asked for a ticket for Match Point at the 3:40 matinee.

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Alone here, possibly the first day in four months that at times felt like a black-hole forever. My cat's on my lap, eager for me to court the muse and get back to work. But I feel like I've forgotten what my work is, maybe even why I have set up my life to be focused on doing this. Why is it always so hard? With all the work of the past seven years, by now I should be over the hurdle of how to get started, able to conquer my sloth and entropy and know how to buckle down and focus. An artist friend in Baltimore said she too loses her way between projects, between shows. Her big thing is diving into the work, and when that's going well, that's what matters, what brings her back to the studio, the canvas. Why do I feel like I have to clean the garage, the closet, and the guest room before I can have the luxury of doing that? I've spent months tiptoeing around my own routine in my own house, aware of another person and not wanting to what? show my true colors? blast Mozart's Magic Flute to the rafters while he slept? My issues with my routine, my problems are so often my own making. I wonder how many other artists and writers continually struggle with that.

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