Posts Tagged‘Writing on Writing’

Home » Writing on Writing » Page 112

A Poem About a Poet by Anne Whitehouse

by Erika Dreifus on
1

I have a superb offering for you today: a poem by Anne Whitehouse. This poem is included in Anne’s new poetry collection, Blessings and Curses (Poetic Matrix Press). And, appropriately for this blog’s purposes, it’s a poem inspired by a writing workshop. My deep thanks to Anne for the gift of permission to republish this piece.

CURSE IX

He was not good or kind,
but he was memorable.
He was the Poet,
and we the disciples
each week seeking
the benefit of his insight
as we sat around the table
listening politely
while he free-associated,
his random thoughts
drifting into aperçus
delivered in a high-pitched
nasal voice, the ash
hanging off his cigarette
until it dropped by itself.

At the interview
for admission to the class
I was in awe of him.
“These are yours?” he asked,
indicating my Fogg Poems.
In suspense I assented.
“Not bad,” he continued,
and paused. “But there are
so many of them.”
He sighed, leafing
through the seven pages
as if they constituted a burden.
“You’re in the class,” he said,
handing them back to me.

Believing he must be right,
I let him influence me.
From that day on
I dared not add another poem,
though possibilities still
occurred to me,
I ignored my ideas
until they went away.
At the time I didn’t know
he was writing his own series
of loosely-titled sonnets
hundreds of them
he would publish
in multiple versions
under two titles.

**

As winter melted into spring,
his mind grew unhinged.
One afternoon in class,
hearing workmen
making a racket
in the room below us,
he flew into a rage
and shouted at them
through the ceiling,
banging his chair
on the floor in retaliation.

Another time I saw him
shuffling across Mass. Ave.
in bedroom slippers
looking lost and dazed.

At his poetry reading at The Advocate,
he could barely speak.
The week before his collapse
he put aside student work
and, ignoring us,
closed his eyes and intoned,
“A bracelet of hair about the bone.”

“A bracelet of hair about the bone,”
he uttered the line again
and again, in a trance,
his voice growing fainter
until at last he grew silent.

We fled, leaving him
clutching his dead cigarette,
the ash scattered on the table,
staring into nothing.

(Bonus: Check out practicing writer John Vanderslice (Creating Van Gogh)’s review of Blessings and Curses for the Santa Fe Writers Project.)

Quotation of the Week: Richard Marius

by Erika Dreifus on
6

Here’s a favorite from one of my own teachers, Richard Marius:

“All writers create. I am always annoyed to hear fiction and poetry called ‘creative’ writing as if writing that explains, describes, and narrates – nonfiction – should somehow be relegated to the basement of the writing enterprise to dwell with the pails and the pipes. To assume that only fiction and poetry are ‘creative’ is to imagine that fiction writers and poets are somehow superior to scholars, journalists, and others who report, explain, and describe. A good case may be made for the proposition that the most truly original and creative writers in our society today work in nonfiction – Tom Wolfe, Gloria Emerson, Roger Rosenblatt, Carl Schorske, Joan Didion, Joe McGinniss, John McPhee, Garry Wills, Robert Caro, David McCullough, Roger Angell, Barbara Tuchman, and a host of others.”

Source: Marius, A Writer’s Companion, first edition (New York: Knopf, 1985), 15.

Informal Poll: Reading Dickens

by Erika Dreifus on
17

This piece, titled “Why Are We Still Reading Dickens?”, unleashed a flood of associations for me. I remembered my childhood hours in front of the television, glued to Once Upon A Classic. I remembered lugging my copy of David Copperfield to my second-grade classroom (yes, I was a nerd – early!). I remembered college readings of Dombey & Son (very well) and Our Mutual Friend (sadly, less well). I remembered A Christmas Carol in multiple formats: book, play, movie. I remembered reading a Dickens biography-for-children when I was still in elementary school, and I remembered visiting the Charles Dickens Museum in London during my first trip to that city.

And I remembered the disillusionment that filled me several years ago when I read a Listserv post from one of my Harvard colleagues to the effect that he needed help overcoming this challenge: he was designing an independent study with a student majoring in British history and literature, and he needed to cover Dickens without reading anything “inordinately long.” And I remembered how much worse I felt when I read our department chairman’s accommodating reply.

But this is not a rant about how English majors can get away these days without reading Dickens. Here’s what I want to know: Have you read anything by Charles Dickens? If so, which book(s)? And did you read his work “voluntarily,” or was your reading a result of an assignment (and if it was a result of an assignment, was it at the pre-college, college, or post-college/MFA level)? Please share, in comments.

Thanks for playing!

Friday Find: Tess Gallagher’s Commencement Address to Whidbey Writers Workshop MFA Graduates, August 2009

by Erika Dreifus on
Disabled

Last month, Tess Gallagher – self-described poet, essayist, short story writer, scriptwriter, and nonfiction writer – addressed the newest graduates of the Whidbey Writers Workshop MFA program. Her speech, titled “The Writers’ Life: A Few Observations,” is now online, and I recommend that you all take some time this weekend to read it. As many of you probably know, Gallagher is the widow of Raymond Carver, and her reflections in this speech include a judicious sprinkling of Carver-related anecdotes.

Enjoy, and see you back here next Tuesday (I’ll be observing the Jewish Holy Day of Yom Kippur on Monday–no blogging!).

The Writer’s Block: Midge Raymond’s Blog on Living a Writer’s Life

by Erika Dreifus on
Disabled

Just a quick note to share that Midge Raymond, author of Forgetting English, which I reviewed earlier this year, is blogging about writing for the Seattle P-I. Although some of the content is clearly directed toward Seattle-area writers, much of it is targeted to a broader audience. I think that the blog, titled “The Writer’s Block: Living a Writer’s Life,” is well worth your time. Check it out!