Comments on: Publishing

By: edward mycue

edward mycue — Wed, 03 Dec 2008 18:33:37 +0000

talking about poetrymaking reminds me of my neighbor mindy the one who works at safeway
on outer mission near nancy keane’s 3300 bar as
she walks old squat and small arthritic mickey
waiting for him as he limps across the driveway
as i watch hoping no driver fails to notice his
old white low form as it moves still onward

reminding me of william empson’s LET IT GO poem
of just 6 lines said to be the last he wrote
before stopping many years before he died:

“It is this deep blankness is the real thing strange.
The more things happen to you the more you
cant
Tell or remember even what they were.

The contradictions cover such a range.
The talk would talk and go so far aslant.
You don’t want madhouse and the whole thing there.”

By: Peter

Peter — Wed, 03 Dec 2008 16:58:29 +0000

WRITING TO PUBLISH

That wing of poetry
the dramatic arts of publication

that there is a part of us
always working to limit us

who argues vainly against
the things he loves

(that’s a question
that one him

amazing in the depth
of his self-congratulation

I keep trying to capture
his attention

if only to tell him
to get back to work.

By: T. Clear

T. Clear — Wed, 03 Dec 2008 02:54:47 +0000

Nice post. Once a poem has gone public, it becomes something else, with its own life-generating energy.
Through the years I’ve often been amazed at how much a poem possessed the possibility for change (for me) the moment it went public — whether it be in a workshop, read aloud, or published.

By: Alice Pettway

Alice Pettway — Tue, 02 Dec 2008 19:42:21 +0000

You’ve struck at the heart of a misperception I frequently find myself confronting. Quite often when I reveal that I am a poet, I am asked if I find writing to be therapeutic, comforting, etc. On some level, of course, I do. But poetry, as you so eloquently stated, cannot be a private endeavor.

A poem must be both the writer’s and the reader’s before it has accomplished its purpose. If a piece fails to reach this symbiosis, I am afraid it must reside in some other world than that of poetry.

By: jd

jd — Mon, 01 Dec 2008 19:01:18 +0000

Jeffree, in some ways, the audience keeps one honest — though of course we can make the mistake of pandering to an audience, which I guess is the flip side of this.

By the way, I think doing the work — sketching or writing in one’s journal — in private, for one’s self alone, can be a useful prelude to going public — preparation. And private working might be useful to individuals who do not aspire to art. The processes of art can be healing, I think, even if they do not produce finished work. But artists, as such, are interested in the finished, public, work.

By: Jeffree Stewart

Jeffree Stewart — Mon, 01 Dec 2008 17:21:10 +0000

I enjoyed reading this, Joseph- what you are saying relates well to my experience as a painter. While there is nothing so powerful or important for an artist as, to quote Painter Guy Anderson, “….doing the work…” it is also true there is a real alchemy to placing one’s work where others can see it. Only then, one lives with the fact others are seeintg, experiencing it….and while their response is often unknown, somehow the whole equation changes.

By: Jennifer

Jennifer — Mon, 01 Dec 2008 10:04:58 +0000

For years my writing turned me inward – it was a survival tactic as a child, I think, to make worlds where none were proffered – and it has been a long journey for me to turn my writing outward. It feels different, writing for a presumed reader. It makes me want to be more clear; I assume fewer givens at the outset of a piece. It feels more genuiune, and it feels more generous. (And, most certainly not incidently, it led to my first acceptances.)

“An entirely private poem, like an entirely private language, is impossible.” I’ll have to keep thinking about this.