Elizabeth

2004-10-01T23:43:00.000-04:00

Slightly drunk and tired, having eaten too much today, I am hardly in the mood to work on the drafts I have accumulated in the past month that are begging to be edited and turned into things more akin to poems. That task seems impossible right now. When I am actually writing, I can never imagine not being able to write. It's not that it's easy- I struggle and know that I'm making poor choices at times- but it's the most doable thing in the world. In fact it's the only thing to do.

But when I'm not writing, I don't even remember what it feels like to write. I don't have the faintest notion at the moment how I would go about constructing a poem.

When I'm 30 will I still be writing poetry?

Walking up 2nd Ave today I found an old copy of W.H. Auden's The Dyer's Hand and Other Essays for $4. The vendor told me it was a great edition and said it was "vintage". I laughed not realizing he meant the publisher, not the condition. I started reading it while walking back home and became immediately discouraged. I will now quote at length:

It is astonishing how many young people of both sexes when asked what they want to do in life, give neither a sensible answer...Nor a romantic answer...A surprisingly large number say "I want to be a writer"....Even if they say "I want to be a journalist," this is because they are under the illusion that in that profession they will be able to create...

Among these would-be writers, the majority have no marked literary gift. This in itself is not surprising; a marked gift for any occupation is not very common. What is surprising is that such a high percentage of those without any marked talent for any profession should think of writing as the solution. One would have expected that a certain number would imagine that they had a talent for medicine or engineering and so on, but this is not the case. In our age, if a young person is untalented, the odds are in favor of his imagining he wants to write. (from The Poet & The City)

Reading for Critical Texts of Literary Theory...

2004-09-27T21:29:00.000-04:00

"For the end of social corruption is to destroy all sensibility to pleasure; and therefore it is corruption. It begins at the imagination and the intellect as at the core, and distributes itself thence as a paralyzing venom, through the affections into the very appetites, until all become a torpid mass in which sense hardly survives. At the approach of such a period, Poetry ever addresses itself to those faculties which are the last to be destroyed, and its voice is heard, like the footsteps of Astraea, departing from the world".

Percy Bysshe Shelly, A Defence of Poetry

2004-09-27T00:32:00.000-04:00

For the most part, I write very brief lyrical poems, often under 14 lines. Strangely enough though, there are few things I like better than being in the process of writing a long poem in parts. The first time I ever wrote one was about Eva Hesse and although in the end I ended up reducing it to a shorter poem, I remember the feeling of carrying it with me constantly.

Right now, I think I might be writing another long poem in parts although I'm not sure exactly what direction it will head in. I want to write to RrP and ask his opinion, but am reluctant to send such a poor draft. Whatever. I will remain content with the feeling of being engaged in this poem.

Last night, very drunk, I watched part of "Sylvia". MR believes that there is something terribly sad in Plath's relentless ambition and that it somehow taints her work. I don't know about that. Maybe MR is such a mediocre poet (who am I to speak? he's published with awards) because he lacks that relentless drive and ambition. Is it possible to be a sort of passive poet?

Lots of Thom Gunn in my head right now. Time to memorize some Spanish vocabulary.

Thom Gunn

2004-09-26T22:38:00.000-04:00

I like loud music, bars, and boisterous men.
That help me if not lose then leave behind,
What else, the self.

Thom Gunn

2004-09-25T02:39:00.000-04:00

I've spent all evening conjugating Spanish verbs in the preterite, imperfect and subjunctive tenses. I write them over and over again, using up 3 subject notebooks in a matter of days.

When I was in Playa de Carmen last spring, I spent a night with a 19 year old soccer player whose name I never caught. He learned English by watching reruns of "Friends" on television. I kept asking him to speak to me in Spanish, but he was convinced that I wasn't listening or couldn't understand. He would talk in gibberish ("madre el de todos menos gato") and ask me to translate.

He wanted to have sex, but we had no place to go and I had my period so I gave him a hand job on a bench and after he came we slept for a while on some concrete by a little garden. I wanted to rest on the beach but he told me that the cops hose down the people who fall asleep at the shore. We stayed together until 6 AM and by then he was 5 hours late for the curfew his coach enforced so I told him to tell his coach he was sleep walking. He had never heard the phrase before and kept repeating it as walk sleeping.

I will never be the type of poet I want to be because I have no personality. I have no self. Eliot sees writing as extinguishing the self, but even he understands that one must have a personality to know what it's like to want to get rid of it. In workshop after workshop, my classmates and professors tell me that the language I use is beautiful but they're left wanting more. They don't understand exactly what the poem is about; the speaker seems remote. I fill my poems with allusions because I'm not a real person.

I was afraid to be awake all night so I took a Tylenol 3. I had attempted to make a martini, but it was vile and I couldn't drink it all. I am already in the dream type state the codeine creates.

I told Dad that I am drawn to anything that will alter the way I feel or think- from Nyquil to acid. He said that he used to be too and one day you just get sick of how bad it makes you feel afterward.

Tomorrow I am going to pretend that I'm real. I am going to go to the gym by 11 AM, shower, buy some makeup and clothing, study Spanish and meet Andrea for Italian food and wine on MacDougal Street at 6 PM. We will wander around tipsy afterward and then maybe I will meet Mitch et. al for his birthday celebration. I will try to make amends with Andrew and Pesce and refrain from telling everyone that I don't actually exist. I will not sleep with a stranger on the street or engage in any other of the dangerous behavior I've been embracing as of late. I will not spend all Sunday in bed, hungover and wanting to die.