Rut

I’ve been strug­gling with poet­ry late­ly. I feel that mine is too cere­bral, I feel I make peo­ple work too hard. When I try to open the access, I lose some­thing along the way, and I’m not quite too sure what it is. All that I seem left with is ‘wry.’ Twists and turns of phrase, word play, gives a feel­ing of wry­ness, but naught else.

In short, I feel stuck in a rut, and with­out inspi­ra­tion, or direc­tion. I am find­ing it hard to go any­where new, because I am focused on where I’ve been. The anthro­pol­o­gist in me [the per­son who is inter­est­ed in things peo­ple are inter­est­ed in] does not know where to go next.

Here is where you come in.

I think if I get feed­back from peo­ple, or rules to fol­low, what not to do, what new to try, et cetera, I might get my head around this writer’s apa­thy. In short, I’m ask­ing for advice, and assign­ments.

I don’t pre­tend toward any type of writ­ing tal­ent, but I know I can do bet­ter than what I do cur­rent­ly. My best is all I ask of me. But, I’m not sure I can do my best with­out y’all.

6 thoughts on “Rut”

  1. thanks for all the advice y’all. ’tis quite chock full of wis­dom.

    ron, i’ve been lis­ten­ing to alot of J5 late­ly, the oth­ers i will look into.

    B?rd, call me either, i answer to both in the real­ly real world.

    Muf­fin Fool, ach! where do you find ’em!

  2. You might be tir­ing of the form; you might wan­na try a short sto­ry, a one-act, lit­er­ary jour­nal­ism, who knows. Poet­ry might not be yr bowl of cher­ries. If that’s not the case, as you’d not unrea­son­ably argue, then I’d sug­gest just try­ing to widen yr range of every­day obser­va­tion: watch & lis­ten and then con­tem­plate & reimag­ine and then final­ly express. View what you take in under dif­fer­ent lights and through dif­fer­ent lens­es. And that’s all just talk­ing about the exter­nal world–there’s a whole inte­ri­or one for every indi­vid­ual and min­ing it for cre­ative raw mate­ri­als can be cathar­tic. Sources of inspi­ra­tion are legion, with­in & with­out, tan­gi­ble & intan­gi­ble, as you well know (you know all of this; I’m just try­ing to remind you), but inex­plic­a­bly, we’ll run into ruts like these. Don’t for­get there’s always crests that fol­low these troughs, though the divid­ing inter­val varies. (I’ve been in a trough for a looooong while.) Cast a wider net, I guess, is what I’m say­ing. And when you catch some­thing worth keep­ing, you can put me wise to less cheesy metaphors.

  3. cere­bral is good, don’t lose that.

    there is, i think, a bal­ance that needs to be reached and the fact that you are aware of a self- per­ceived lack of ‘acces­si­bil­i­ty’ in your writ­ing is a sign of growth.

    the idea of a “learned” poet is one that makes the effort of writ­ing an endeav­or, a grand intel­lec­tu­al task– it makes one feel like there is some­thing to be unlocked in our words.

    you feel like eliot; you feel like pound.

    but, in some ways, it divorces the read­er from your effort: they spend more time try­ing to cat­a­logue allu­sions and mytho­log­i­cal ref­er­ences than lis­ten­ing to your words or visu­al­iz­ing images. your read­ers (and you?) start to see the trans­mis­sion of mean­ing through the dis­sec­tion as opposed to the expe­ri­ence.

    and so… what’s the solu­tion?

    be spe­cif­ic as opposed to ‘cere­bral’: look around you and write down what your sens­es allow you to write down; at first, care noth­ing about the tech­ni­cal, the sophis­ti­cat­ed.

    try stream of con­scious­ness and drafts of lines and list­ing words– seize that which is over­looked.

    impress your read­er with new ways of look­ing and feel­ing and smelling and hear­ing and tast­ing a world com­mon to you.

    also, lis­ten to good, real hip- hop: a tribe called quest, de la soul, com­mon sense, juras­sic 5, the roots, lau­ryn hill (unplugged), saul williams, thought­break­ers, pub­lic ene­my…

    even in more main­stream b.i.g. and tupac, lis­ten­ing to hip- hop at its core pro­vides access to meter and image and a real­i­ty we some­times want to over­look.

    i love when i dis­pense advice that i am unable to take.

    good luck.

  4. many good thoughts there. i know the prob­lem you speak of, har­vey. i think you need to keep in mind that you are try­ing to say some­thing, as opposed to try­ing to write poet­ry. don’t try to write poet­ry. we all have pre­con­ceived notions of what poet­ry is, and try­ing to copy that or reach for it is a bad idea. it’s like try­ing to make a great record instead of just mak­ing the music that is in you. also con­sid­er the pos­si­bil­i­ty that, right now, no music is in you.

    some “excer­cis­es” you might con­sid­er: nar­row in on a sub­ject. don’t try to give it mean­ing, just describe it. let the sub­ject be some­thing mun­dane or small, like a tea cup or a pen­cil. try to describe it with­out using any pro­nouns. you may find that the result starts out mun­dane but ends up with a poten­tial for some­thing big­ger than itself. this should get your wheels turn­ing.

    a vari­a­tion of this is to write about a per­son or rela­tion­ship with­out using words like “i” or “you” or “he” or “she” or any oth­er “per­son­al” words.

    final­ly, pay atten­tion to “ready-mades” around you. in my neigh­bor­hood there is a sign that says “every day buy” in big let­ters fol­lowed by some more info about buy­ing a park­ing space. look at words in sequence on prod­ucts and take them out of their con­text. check out some of the “engr­ish” web­sites (japan­ese prod­ucts with odd eng­lish phras­es on them). or write some­thing coher­ent and run it through an online trans­la­tion tool, then trans­late it back to eng­lish. you’ll get some­thing kind of messed up. from that you may find three or four words in a sequence that gives you an idea. etc etc etc.

  5. by the way, i keep call­ing you “har­vey” — i think i get it from a user­name or email address or some­thing, even though your name is Adam. would you pre­fer i call you Adam?

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