Over cake with Laurie...
And curry with Laura...
I had a really great conversation... the kind of amazing conversation that makes me want to go back to school, and also read things. The kind of conversation that makes me feel like Atlanta is someplace I can really live... a writerly conversation.
Basically, I am trying to figure out why I have to "pick" an aesthetic.
I have to commit to being a member of my poetic generation, all post-modern and shit... or I have to commit to believing in the narrative, the story, the chronological world... and accept that I'm in a club with a bunch of old white guys who fear change.
Do I really? Can't I find a way to build a theory out of fairytales and mythology, but also Derrida? Help me, bloggers! Who can I read? How can I resolve my need for the story with my desire to man the barricades of the revolution. Would this be a reasonable project... can I write the "new narrative?" Will my two surfaces help me? Will the Now and Later work with the "Once upon a time???"
Is it time to do a PhD? Who can I read?
I had a really great conversation... the kind of amazing conversation that makes me want to go back to school, and also read things. The kind of conversation that makes me feel like Atlanta is someplace I can really live... a writerly conversation.
Basically, I am trying to figure out why I have to "pick" an aesthetic.
I have to commit to being a member of my poetic generation, all post-modern and shit... or I have to commit to believing in the narrative, the story, the chronological world... and accept that I'm in a club with a bunch of old white guys who fear change.
Do I really? Can't I find a way to build a theory out of fairytales and mythology, but also Derrida? Help me, bloggers! Who can I read? How can I resolve my need for the story with my desire to man the barricades of the revolution. Would this be a reasonable project... can I write the "new narrative?" Will my two surfaces help me? Will the Now and Later work with the "Once upon a time???"
Is it time to do a PhD? Who can I read?
4 Comments:
I think you really would like this Don Byrd book I'm reading.
I get to keep books a really long time, so let me know if you want to borrow it, unless you have a library privilege thing set up in town.
That was really good lunch--I love the samosas there.
Check out Dana Levin's poem "Quelquechose" from her new book Wedding Day. A lot of people are using collage (I'm thinking Beth Ann Fennelly, Denise Duhamel's 911 collage from Two by Two) to work around a narrative...This is a topic I am interested in as well.
I just found your blog & this post reads as if it was picked right from my brain. I, too, am struggling with the idea of picking an aesthetic. I feel like I believe every new thing I read. I can't make up my mind what I write like or if I should even care.
Anyways, Your blog looks very cool. & Bust is a fun mag, btw.
I don't think you have to pick an aesthetic at all. I mean, other than the fact that Richard Hugo said so, why do you need to pin yourself down and define yourself? I gave up on that project a long time ago. Of course, I also gave up having a career as a poet, so maybe you shouldn't listen to me.
But honestly, you wouldn't let somebody else tell you what you can or can't write, or how you can or can't write it (except as an exercise). Why would you create an artificial someone to perch on your shoulder and whack you in the ear with a theory stick every time you sit down to write (except as an exercise)?
If you need to be able to explain yourself, do the explaining after you do the writing. But poetry isn't in the explaining, it's in the doing, and if a theory or structure or project or idea of voice doesn't help you in the doing, then drop it, it's extra.
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