WHAT IT IS TO WRITE, OR SOD THE STATS
What is a poet? An unhappy man who in his heart harbors a deep anguish, but whose lips are so fashioned that the moans and cries which pass over them are transformed into ravishing music. His fate is like that of the unfortunate victims whom the tyrant Phalaris imprisoned in a brazen bull, and slowly tortured over a steady fire; their cries could not reach the tyrant's ears so as to strike terror into his heart; when they reached his ears they sounded like sweet music. And men crowd about the poet and say to him, 'Sing for us soon again'- which is as much as to say, 'May new sufferings torment your soul, but may your lips be fashioned as before; for the cries would only distress us, but the music, the music is delightful.' And the critics come forward and say, 'That is perfectly done--just as it should be, according to the rules of aesthetics.' Now it is understood that a critic resembles a poet to a hair; he only lacks the anguish in his heart and the music upon his lips. I tell you, I would rather be a swineherd, understood by the swine, than a poet misunderstood by men.
Søren Kierkegaard
Me to a ‘T’...
...
Actually, I feel more comfortable with my writing now than at any earlier time in my life. If I was driven excessively from the start by the desire to set the world alight with my deathless prose and incandescent verse, that imperative ran out of momentum when I realised that pretty much all was vanity and I was only reaching a constituency of one and even he was losing interest in my prodigious output. So I stopped writing and played bass guitar in a series of bands instead.
This was a salutary experience. Audiences identify with the vocalist or adulate the lead guitarist; they don't notice the bass guitarist. He plunks alone, shadowy & monosyllabic behind the fireworks. So I stood on the left of the drummer, laid back on the rhythm and just enjoyed the simple process of getting to grips with a musical instrument.
And, over time, this attention to the medium over the message had its kickback into writing. For the first time I started to write poems principally for the sake of the statement made and the craft of putting it together. It would be disingenuous to claim indifference to modest publishing success during the past 20 years: I sent the poems off; I lamented their return; I rejoiced at their acceptance. But now a different kind of momentum drove the writing, a motive force that was unimpeded by rejection.
So I guess I may well have wobbled off towards old age content enough with a small bunch of homebrew, free range poems tucked into a notebook, read by family and friends and the 500 subscribers to those occasional little mags had it not been for the discovery of the weblog. A particular joy of blogging for me - and I'm certain for many others too - is in its synthesis of ars gratia artis on the part of the writer coupled with the potential for instant interaction with the reader. There is no sense of tailoring output for a largely invisible public: if the stuff has intrinsic merit then it will find its constituency and, one by one, maybe, they will come knocking on the door via the comments box. And for my purposes at this fairly advanced point in my life that is, most of the time, pretty much sufficient unto the day.
What is a poet? An unhappy man who in his heart harbors a deep anguish, but whose lips are so fashioned that the moans and cries which pass over them are transformed into ravishing music. His fate is like that of the unfortunate victims whom the tyrant Phalaris imprisoned in a brazen bull, and slowly tortured over a steady fire; their cries could not reach the tyrant's ears so as to strike terror into his heart; when they reached his ears they sounded like sweet music. And men crowd about the poet and say to him, 'Sing for us soon again'- which is as much as to say, 'May new sufferings torment your soul, but may your lips be fashioned as before; for the cries would only distress us, but the music, the music is delightful.' And the critics come forward and say, 'That is perfectly done--just as it should be, according to the rules of aesthetics.' Now it is understood that a critic resembles a poet to a hair; he only lacks the anguish in his heart and the music upon his lips. I tell you, I would rather be a swineherd, understood by the swine, than a poet misunderstood by men.
Søren Kierkegaard
Me to a ‘T’...
...
Actually, I feel more comfortable with my writing now than at any earlier time in my life. If I was driven excessively from the start by the desire to set the world alight with my deathless prose and incandescent verse, that imperative ran out of momentum when I realised that pretty much all was vanity and I was only reaching a constituency of one and even he was losing interest in my prodigious output. So I stopped writing and played bass guitar in a series of bands instead.
This was a salutary experience. Audiences identify with the vocalist or adulate the lead guitarist; they don't notice the bass guitarist. He plunks alone, shadowy & monosyllabic behind the fireworks. So I stood on the left of the drummer, laid back on the rhythm and just enjoyed the simple process of getting to grips with a musical instrument.
And, over time, this attention to the medium over the message had its kickback into writing. For the first time I started to write poems principally for the sake of the statement made and the craft of putting it together. It would be disingenuous to claim indifference to modest publishing success during the past 20 years: I sent the poems off; I lamented their return; I rejoiced at their acceptance. But now a different kind of momentum drove the writing, a motive force that was unimpeded by rejection.
So I guess I may well have wobbled off towards old age content enough with a small bunch of homebrew, free range poems tucked into a notebook, read by family and friends and the 500 subscribers to those occasional little mags had it not been for the discovery of the weblog. A particular joy of blogging for me - and I'm certain for many others too - is in its synthesis of ars gratia artis on the part of the writer coupled with the potential for instant interaction with the reader. There is no sense of tailoring output for a largely invisible public: if the stuff has intrinsic merit then it will find its constituency and, one by one, maybe, they will come knocking on the door via the comments box. And for my purposes at this fairly advanced point in my life that is, most of the time, pretty much sufficient unto the day.
