Chainsaws & the Rewards of Writing

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RT has found respite in a worthy activity: this weekend, for the first time in more than a couple of years, he has gone out and earned honest money. The work, however, has been highly unusual for him: he is helping a friend and her son clear their sizable property of fallen tree trunks and branches. He freely confesses that part of this work has involved the use of a chainsaw (in fact, more than one), by far the most powerful (and dangerous) machine he has ever operated.

Saw and axe (and while we’re at it, hammer and nail) share a peculiar place in the human imagination. As anyone who has read Gilgamesh has probably realized, this hero’s expedition to the Cedar Forest is merely the first recorded incident of mankind’s absolute obsession with felling trees. Why we must cut down the most beautiful forests (or climb mountains or erect standing stone pillars) is anyone’s guess, but the motivations seem intertwined with our deepest spiritual impulses. To panel the Sun God’s temple in cedar, to reach the habitation of the gods, to compass the stars are all ways of connecting with nature and the absolute, of rendering homage to the unfathomable.

And yet there is also no denying that these activities are among the most destructive we engage in. Perhaps the problem lies in stripping the sacred from human activity, of turning a temple into suburban sprawl, of creating traffic jams of people waiting to get to the top of Everest, of littering low Earth orbit with space junk. What began as worship has transmogrified itself into mountaintop removal.

I enjoyed working with the two chain saws–neither of them especially large and one adapted for removing low-hanging tree limbs. I am reminded of Rita Mae Brown’s advice–the intellectual work of writing should be balanced with physical labor. Or again, I think of William Faulkner’s sabbatical spent working in a factory–as Benito Juarez spent his exile from Mexico in the United States. For their own sanity, writers must occasionally engage in the first worship of physical exertion.

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Latest update: i’m still helping my friend clean up the house, but now the work is decidedly less glamorous (but all the same, safer). Two weeks further into this gig I’m cleaning up several rooms that will be rented as an apartment. & these rooms have not been well-tended in some time: dirt, grease, dirty fridge…you get the picture. On the other hand, my boss is ADD and has *no* problem with me getting up to blog at 2:30 in the morning, since she (and often, her son) are up at the same hour doing whatever. & it’s nice having a room w/ a door i can shut & kitchen privileges.

What does this have to do with being a writer? I guess every writer needs to discover that an alternate universe exists where such things as ADD, writing, and the willingness to do manual labor are assets.      RT

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Image: Early Mechanical Saw, 1860; Hamilton; WikiCmns; Public Domain.

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Why Write?

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This is the fact: you could be long dead before people appreciate your writing. It’s happened plenty to writers of the first rank: jealousy, stupidity, war–in other words, plain old politics–obscured their talent and contributions. So, if fame and fortune are hard to find, just why are you writing?

From personal experience, RT can tell you that this is not a popular question at cocktail parties. Even less popular is quoting the Elements of Style: Writing is an act of faith. To help you (and me) answer this little demon of a question, here are some answers:

1) I have to write. To confirm the truth of this motivation, go to a new or small poetry reading. Chances are you’re not going to meet successful people there. Folks are doing OK; they’re getting by; they’re dealing with their issues–but nobody owns a BMW.

2) I’m in love with writing. You can’t get more corn pone than this, but at least it saves you from discussing the eviction notice you recently received. Getting your words out there feels great.

3) My writing is important. This one will really steam your interlocutor. But think about it: are you telling me that Shakespeare, Du Fu, Charlotte Bronte, Leo Tolstoy didn’t know that what they were doing mattered? Of course, no one in our generation has the right to exist on their artistic level, but you can always hope.

4) Because I’m a romantic. So what if people think you’re a wastrel sipping absinthe every night? Notoriety gets attention.

5) Because what I do matters. This is the dirty little secret that the contemporary world prefers to ignore. We are responsible. We have an obligation to make the world a better place. We must not cheat the gifts we have been given.

Writers are entitled to a full life like everyone else: community, acknowledgement, pleasure are as important to us as to anyone. But we keep one eye on the far horizon of history.    RT

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Art: Mental Reactions; A.E. Meyer; WikiCmns; Public Domain.

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Support Your Local Poets–Step 1

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RT has a confession to make: he is feeling the pinch of this sorry economy, and, as happens as such moments, he is wishing that his poetry might produce a bit more income. Now, some societies, such as Japan and Russia, have long treasured their poets, and do what they can to honor them–sometimes, especially if they lack official sanction. We need to take a leaf from their book and support our local poets, who usually have made a ridiculously small amount of money off their work. Why? Because modern poetry has gotten a reputation for being absolutely useless. Hmmm…RT has posted on this subject before, and the reader is encouraged to consider some of the benefits he has suggested from the reading of poetry.

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Here is the first and most basic step to supporting local poets:

1) Buy a book by a local poet. If you live near an independent bookstore, this is easy to do: just go to the bookstore and ask the clerk for recommendations (or at least where the poetry section is). I’ve found that almost all local bookdealers (and sometimes national chains) carry local chapbooks and small press volumes.

2) Choosing the book. The lesson that RT learned for visual art holds for poetry as well: buy what you like.

How do you judge a poetry book? By its

Materials. Shoddy book production–an unattractive or minimal cover, poor binding, and an uninspired layout and typeface–usually means poor poetry.

Shortest poem. This is usually only a few lines long and will give you a sense of the poet’s talents and themes.

First poem. Every poet knows that a volume’s opening poem had better be good. It should intrigue the reader and make him or her want to turn the page. If this poem falls short, you can bet other poems have problems.

3) Read the book. OK, despite what you might think, this is the tough part, the moment when all the little anti-poetry demons come out of the woodwork and say things like, “You should’ve spent that money on something more important!” and “Get real; poetry is boring, self-indulgent navel-staring!” And the worst part is, these demons don’t play fair; they don’t announce themselves openly, but just make sure that there’s always something else that must be done before you have earned the right to read your new book.

There are various ways of dealing with these demons: put the book on your bed in the morning, so that you must put it on the night table if you want to get to sleep. And the curious thing about poetry is, if a poem is read before we turn off the lights, it will probably influence our dreaming–and may even enrich it. A poet’s language has a way of working itself into our subconscious, waking up thoughts and feelings that have been put safely out of the way, but which may need an airing. And note: some of these neglected items may actually be quite pleasurable.

If this doesn’t work, then try taking your new poetry book to work. Read it over lunch; quote from it during the afternoon chat with your cubicle buddy; see if you can find information on the author on the internet. Or, if you feel that something is irritating about the poet’s approach, imagine rewriting one of the poems.

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Really, nothing matters more to a writer than finding an audience (unless, of course, it’s seeing a little money coming in from the effort ), and, truth be told, many writers deserve that audience. This is doubly true of local authors–they are usually more accessible, both in terms of style and subject, than well-known poets, who often adopt complex approaches to their work. So try buying and reading a book by a local poet once a month and see what you think at the end of the year…you may have learned quite a bit about your community–and yourself.      (and RT will be taking up his own poetry challenge & reporting on each book he reads.)

RT

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Image: Top: Beatrice and Dante Contemplate the Highest Heaven; William Blake; WikiCmns; Public Domain. Bottom: Baudelaire; etching by Manet; WikiCmns; Public Domain.

Poetry Tips from Brian Turner

folks: great poetry advice from New Zealand….RT

 

Poetry Tips from Brian Turner.

Seven Ingredients of Good Writing

It’s always the right time to brush up on the basics…

 

Seven Ingredients of Good Writing.

Confessions of a Disorganized Poet

Defining moments, at least in my life, often arrive by way of a cluttered apartment. Projects draw me inward, I work on and finish them, and am faced by new projects and the debris of my earlier work. Stacks of paper on my “junk” ironing board, my desk covered in an unseemly number of scraps and bits and full pages and bills and advertisements…bring out my clean-up-the-mess champion, Confessions of an Organized Homemaker. Toss the odds and ends out, clean your space up!

And here’s a sure-fire tip: Clutter does not encourage creativity!

It’s an uphill battle, of course–I find an intriguing bit of writing I thought I had abandoned or (worse) something I thought I had lost. My answer: put it all in a special folder to be sorted through later. Much more is involved than that, but even so, at times I’ve gotten close to an organized and attractive space…

RT’s advice: keep working on it!

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Photo: Postit; Author: Nevit Dilmen; WikiCmns; Licence: CC 3.0 Unported.

Friday Freeforall: Prompt Your Weekend Away Redux

It’s been a while since I’ve shared the pleasures of Ms. Roby’s blog: here is a autumn-brownie bite of her writing…   RT

 

Friday Freeforall: Prompt Your Weekend Away Redux.

Idiolects, Poetry, And Why You Need Time Off for Writing

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This is a vast topic. The subject of this post is nothing less than the genius of the human spirit: our need to compose poetry.

Let’s put it another way: poetry is what makes us human. You heard me right: the silly little past-time of love-besotted teenagers and ivory-tower types looking at a pile of eviction notices on their desk is actually something that everyone needs to know if they are to master the intricacies of living a happy life.

Here’s why:

To see how this might be, we should remember the distinction the Rag Tree has made in a previous post between the first mind and rational mind. The first mind is the mind that we inherited from the animals and is capable of intuition, the wordless understanding of what is happening in our immediate surroundings. The rational mind is capable of reason and deduction, the manipulation of abstract concepts and ideas to solve generalized problems.

Unfortunately, intuition doesn’t have the best reputation; we associate it with guessing—that is, making deductions without enough information, or with hard-wired responses acquired in childhood. But in producing a mute feeling, intuition often winnows out the background to arrive at the most important facts of our surrounding—Gosh, it’s a warm night, but what about the shadow that’s moving over there?

The world is music. One need only listen to trees rustling in a breeze or watch deer in a field to know this. Of course, individual events and moments in nature can be highly distressing, but every action is intricately bound to all the rest. It is this balanced music that the intuition listens to.

Being human means harmonizing the rational and first minds—this harmonization is poetry. That is to say, language bridges the gap between the rational and the intuitive. It makes the rational beautiful and the intuitive reasonable. Every poem lies somewhere on the spectrum between music and meaning.

Every thought is a compromise between our need to abstract pattern and to respond physically to the environment—to remain part of the world’s movement. Language creation happens when someone’s intuition of the world differs from most people’s—possibly there is something physically different about him or her, or they grew up somewhere else. Their native sense of things is different, and so they begin using an idioglossia (i.e., they create and speak their own language).

Yes, idioglossia is relative. After all, there is no such thing as perfect communication. But, at the more creative end of the spectrum, an idioglossia will begin to attract listeners by its beauty and clarity. Especially in a situation where there are rival cultures and languages warring for control, an idioglossia can evolve into a Creole (and all languages, at bottom, are creoles).

Poetry, on the other hand, is a kind of idiolect—a person’s unique use of the common language. Idiolects are always evolving because people constantly experiment with their words and speech. When the process proceeds undisturbed, it will produce a local dialect. But poetry is closer in spirit to idioglossia—it is a more radical rehandling of speech and is closer to outright language creation—just look at all the phrases that Shakespeare bequeathed to us. (And think of the competition between Anglo-Norman and Middle English that produced the variety of dialects available to the Bard).

Every act of language creation is a moral act intended (at some level) to help people understand themselves and the world more clearly—and to enjoy it more. There is something deeply intentional in this act of intuiting the right words. A great poet deserves her (or his) laurels.

True to its intuitive roots, language flourishes best in a restless or transitional society. Too many rules, although intended to help preserve the language’s clarity, have the paradoxical effect of stifling speakers. Words, and the thoughts and experiences they represent, are spontaneous. Perhaps this is why so many cultures have had a language of literature and study and a language of daily use. Poetry belongs with the quotidian, the music of the moment. Keep your ears pricked on any street corner, and you may hear it.   RT

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Photo: Alaskan Mask, Tunghak–Yupik; WikiCmns; Dallas MOA; Public Domain.

Making a living, dead languages, and why so many pros write so badly

 

Fellow writers–watch those words!  RT

Making a living, dead languages, and why so many pros write so badly.

Translators are writers

 

Some sage words on the translation process from a fellow WP blogger: Translators are writers.