Thank you for asking. You're welcome, I'm glad
if I have been of service
or of interest. It certainly costs me
nothing
but enjoyable time, which I've always
been all too willing to spend. It's a pity
we can't have breakfast again. You know
how it is, and
how it isn't.
8 comments:
Poetry, good conversation and breakfast--is there a better combination? But this title and the way it ends seem so hopeless. No, hopeless is not the right word. Perhaps closed off to possibility. Not a criticism, just an observation.
You have some thought-provoking new poems on the blog today. I'll give my favorites a good think before providing comments. I enjoy when I have a whole batch of new poems to read through at the same time. It makes me look for connections, whether intended by the writer or not.
That's the best way to look for connections! As Robert Frost put it, "I am entitled to EVERY MEANING to be found in one of my poems," and every connection between, so one would suppose. Intended or not.
Yes, something dramatic has happened here in this poem. I'm rather glad I don't know the specifics. It definitely seems sad, and final. Sometimes the only way to keep the best of what's between two people is in the past.
Which is obviously a poem of its own.
I like when you don't know the specifics of the story that exists within a poem you write. It's as though you've tapped into a little world that exists somewhere and only just get a glimpse. It leaves a lot of room for you as the writer (and for the reader too I imagine) to explore and derive meaning as you fill in the gaps.
I once heard someone say that fiction writers must have some view into other worlds that others don't That's how the best writers of science fiction and fantasy are able to render such amazing worlds that are different than our own. I suppose that's a novel idea itself. But I also wonder if it applies to poetry as well. When you say you don't know the specifics of a poem you write, it makes me think of this concept. I don't know if it's true, but I do like the idea that all these stories and poems already exist out there, and it's up to the writer to seek them out and commit them to written words.
Well, for me it's a consequence of a rigorous attitude to validity in criticism. Validity consists in the work itself. Every interpretation is valid to the degree it can be supported from within the text. Interpretation from outside those bounds is, properly regarded, a separate creative work.
I may personally suspect what the specifics were - I may have more than one suspicion to those effects, but if the specifics are left out of the text, then I can never claim to know.
I don't believe for a moment that fiction writers have any parasensory apparatus that they're gleaning their glimpses of other worlds from. Anyway, so much easier to create a world of your own (from matter and energy entirely immaterial and costless!), rather than breaching interdimensionally to spy on some world that's already there, and frankly, may not suit. Especially if you'd like the fictional world to meet some whims and specifications and vague purposes of yours. Cheaper by far to create it - FLASH BANG! - in a moment, the subconscious has already intended all, a lo! You looked and it was there, as if all along. And maybe it was good, but, you know, got to explore a bit first.
No, I don't believe in fiction writers as seers. They're much too nosey to restrict themselves to looking in. But you're right, the idea is probably good for a novel, and I feel like probably has been good for more than one, by now. I feel sure.
In a way, the writer can also become the reader and see a poem or story through a different lens when approached long after the work was originally written. Given that your poems on this blog go back quite a few years, I wonder if you ever have that experience of rereading something you haven't visited in awhile and had a different interpretation that your originally intended meaning as the writer.
As I said, I like the idea of writers tapping into other worlds when they craft their stories. It certainly could explain why characters sometimes have a life of their own and seem to place certain demands upon the writer. But I don't think that's what is really happening in the writing process. Perhaps it's something more akin to having the ability to see the story in ordinary situations or even being able to find something interesting by pulling together the seemingly unconnected or reality and something completely made up (or something like that). In a way, when we write we are seeing into other worlds, even if it is all in our imaginations.
This is the second nudge I've received today that has made me think I need to get back to my writing. I'm sure that wasn't your intention in bringing this up, but this discussion about writing is inspiring me to at least try a short story.
That happens to me right off, with some of them. Seeing a different interpretation from the principle and original one. Others, I'll read it and can't for the life of me figure out what I was going through at the time. For some of them, it was nothing.
But I wouldn't say I ever intend meaning. Not like that, if you mean trying to create or aim or align the words to pierce some point or cover some theme. Usually the poem (or song) knows damn well what it means and I'm trying to interfere as little as possible. Basically, verse is an expression of a kind of self-manifesting impromptu disposable multiple personality order.
Can't really call it a disorder, since the weird sentient self-expression is immediately purged from me upon its completion, and goes off to live a life of its own. It's so weird because when you read it or sing it, you're temporarily right back inside its consciousness, just as if it were all yours! Or as if you were all its. As if it were all yours was. Or at least, you were living in a specific expression of its sentience, which ends up being only single-instance sentience - but it's surprising the depth it goes, or mimics. It's like there are so many specifics just out of frame of what's said, a whole phantom existence implied - which was not yours. Even though it came from your head.
Yeah, using comment reply as an excuse to poem. Very cynical and mercenary, come late November on the Drive to 365, but I'm grateful to you for the opportunity to.
And yes, definitely do a short story. How about one where you're a Flat Earther?
Oh, I like it when you use the comments as an excuse to poem. I also like the use of poem as a verb. Nice touch.
I added flat earther to my list of story ideas. I'm not feeling any inspiration for a story on that topic just yet, but I will start thinking on it. Perhaps it will knock against the other ideas in my head, and some kind of story will come of it.
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