Nov 22, 2010 0
The stifled, envious subject of Jack Spicer’s early poem “The Dancing Ape,” was, for Spicer’s late-’40s Berkeley classmates, just Jack: an awkward, anguished, failed homosexual. One says (in Spicer’s biography) that “nobody was interested” in “a Neanderthal man” like Jack. Another: “He’s so ugly he doesn’t deserve to have sex.” A friend adds that he was “too apish, or animal-like, to [...]
Aug 19, 2009 2
Writing is empathic; that is part of the point. And moments of emotional stress, rupture, fragmentation, et cetera, are frequently the spark that makes good writing go. But it is necessary to let things take their course. All poems about breakups, if they are only poems about breakups, are the same poem. So stare at something else for a while.
Jan 13, 2009 0
Thomas Babington Macaulay: “Perhaps no person can be a poet, or can even enjoy poetry, without a certain unsoundness of mind, if anything which gives so much pleasure ought to be called unsoundness.” Unsoundness, indeed. Pleasure—but for whom?
Oct 30, 2008 0
Writers, notorious as philanderers and divorcees as they are, should perhaps learn to differentiate between the mechanisms of love and those of seduction. Their enterprise—writing—is the latter. As such, the latter’s games, schemas, architectures will always be more interesting, however unnecessary to a right understanding of the former. The distinction between passion and love is a useful one for the writer, though not necessarily as it pertains to a successful love life for him. More likely, the distinction will make him a better writer, a better lover, and a worse partner.
