#183: The life of a writer
Poems about the writing process + Good advice from Mark Duplass + A playlist for February
Dear reader,
I’ve recently realised that I read so many poems regularly, and have become so invested in reading and sharing these gems for the newsletter, that I end up not writing as much as I’d perhaps like to be. Thanks to this realisation, I’ve started experimenting with poetry sprints, where I dedicate a particular day/weekend in the month to reading, falling in love with, and collecting poems I’d like to share in this space. I go rummaging through the Internet for verses that speak to me. This dedicated approach has been helping me feel a channeled intensity that I didn’t feel earlier when my reading process was more haphazard, and ended up keeping me in front of the screen longer. It’s also freed up more time and mental space for me to focus on my own writing. And the poems have been coming :)
I recently watched a talk by Mark Duplass on screenwriting and first drafts. One of my favorite takeaways was how he thinks about the story and then approaches the vomit draft. Mark says that when you’re looking at what you’ve written on a page or screen, it may lead to self-loathing and dissatisfaction because you can keep going back and reading it. For his early screenplays, he would think about the story and then speak out the script as it came to his mind into a hand-held dictaphone.
“This way, you can’t go back, you can’t see what you’ve done, and you can’t criticise it. I literally get up and walk around instead of sitting on a chair, where you can get stuck in lethargy. Go out, walk around, see things in the world, inspire yourself and try to speak out that draft quickly.”
-Mark Duplass
This resonated so much because the idea dump has been such an important aspect of the writing/creative process for me, and so many artists, poets and writers I’ve spoken to over the years. I often use voice notes to capture spurts of lyrics and poetry when they arrive unannounced. And try to keep a small notebook for lines/images/phrases that pass me during the course of a day.
I also have a long Good Ideas list on Notion, which vary from story ideas I’d like to pitch someday to lines or titles for a poem that will be written/completed in the future to interesting side-projects for The Alipore Post. I don’t know how many of these ideas will ever see the light of day, how many of those poems will eventually get written. But it’s so freeing to document these thought drafts, brimming with potential, awaiting the day they manifest.
Poetry Corner
Five poems about the life of a writer that I found during my recent poetry sprint:
1. The Life of a Writer by Jalynn Harris
the life of a writer is desire
i hammer into the page
i make up my mind: the streetlight
is not the moon, but anything can be
made beautiful under the ease
of my hammer
i wish you could see that i write in blue ink
the color of oceans & early mornings
& everything is clear like
tears rushing towards the chin
of my desire. i pen what i’m meant
to pen. how deep in love i am
& how silly of me to spend all morning dreaming
about love & not expect my
desire to set me free
the knives of my fingers tap
out the notion that if i turn the key
it will unlock.
admittedly, i am foolish
about love—a simple yes excites me—
‘cause i know that all that i require will be met
like water meets the tongue. it’s scary
desire, a small fan at my window in the summer,
a booklight lighting the pages of my life
2. Questions to Ask for a Paris Review Interview by David Lehman
Do you have a favorite time of day? Favorite weather?
Tell me about your writing process.
Is that so? I would never have guessed.
Do you ever think about abandoning writing altogether?
I'm sorry but I have to ask you this.
How is writing a novel like playing a game of chess?
One critic called your last book a "mess."
What do you think of psychoanalysis?
You once told me that the greatest human subject is lust.
Have you thought about how and where you'd like to die?
Certainly I can clarify.
I don't mean now, but when you must.
But that begs the question. I mean, what is poetry?
In that case, what is prose?
What made you write The Romance of the Rose?
Is literary influence a Marxist heresy?
How do you feel about being labeled a Southern writer?
Let me play devil's advocate here for a minute.
That split is revealing about America, isn't it?
When was the last time you pulled an all-nighter?
Well (pause) how about Gore Vidal?
When your books appear, do you read the reviews?
How many drafts do you usually do?
What made you write Beowulf in the Mead Hall?
When did you begin writing?
If you could choose the place, where would you live?
What other advice would you give?
Has being a man influenced your writing?
{Or: Has being a woman influenced your writing?)
Can you say how?
What are you working on now?
Those who read your work in the original exclaim upon the
beauty of your writing.
Would you like to comment on literary affairs in the
Netherlands?
Can anything save humanity?
Does genius vary inversely with sanity?
Do you do any work with your hands?
3. For the young who want to by Marge Piercy
Talent is what they say
you have after the novel
is published and favorably
reviewed. Beforehand what
you have is a tedious
delusion, a hobby like knitting.
Work is what you have done
after the play is produced
and the audience claps.
Before that friends keep asking
when you are planning to go
out and get a job.
Genius is what they know you
had after the third volume
of remarkable poems. Earlier
they accuse you of withdrawing,
ask why you don’t have a baby,
call you a bum.
The reason people want M.F.A.’s,
take workshops with fancy names
when all you can really
learn is a few techniques,
typing instructions and some-
body else’s mannerisms
is that every artist lacks
a license to hang on the wall
like your optician, your vet
proving you may be a clumsy sadist
whose fillings fall into the stew
but you’re certified a dentist.
The real writer is one
who really writes. Talent
is an invention like phlogiston
after the fact of fire.
Work is its own cure. You have to
like it better than being loved.
4. At the Metropolitan Museum by Matthew Siegel
I had sworn I wouldn’t write
another poem about my mom
but in the museum there is a room
filled with centuries-old pottery sherds
and it is difficult not to start seeing
symbols everywhere. We walk through
the frigid air toward a reconstructed
temple, likely stolen, I say, and she
looks at me. A rope keeps us from going
further. Who are you texting? she asks
and I want to scream but don't.
What question could she ask
that wouldn't make me bristle?
I once called our fights a kind of dance
in a poem I rightly tore up. I won’t
call it anything I tell myself in the poem
I told myself I wouldn’t write.
I’d change the subject but resistance
is a sign to go forward, I tell my students
because something is wrong with me.
So I go forward into what it might mean
to struggle a few hours with the one
who made me, whose dark I once lived
inside. We step into the centuries
between us and the vessels behind glass
which once held water, grain, and now
the silence of a light so gentle
as to not damage the precious things.
5/ The Writer’s Song by Patti Smith
I did not wish to work
I did not wish to earn
but to curl with my jar
in the sweet sorghum
I laid my mat among the reeds
I could hear the freemen call
oh my life
what does it matter
will the reed cease bending
will the leper turn
I had a horn I did not blow
I had a sake and another
I could hear the freemen
drunk with sky
what matter my cry
will the moon swell
will the flame shy
banzai banzai
it is better to write
then die
in the blue crater
set with straw
I could hear
the freemen call
the way is hard
the gate is narrow
what matter I say
with the new mown hay
my pillow
I had a sake and another
I did not care to own nor rove
I wrote my name upon the water
nothing but nothing above
banzai banzai
it is better to write
then die
a thousand prayers
and souvenirs
set away in earthenware
we draw the jars
from the shelves
drink our parting
from ourselves
so be we king
or be we bum
the reed still whistles
the heart still hums
Recommended Listening
1. The Alipore Post February Playlist
A playlist of all the songs I’ve loved this month.
2. warsan versus melancholy (the seven stages of being lonely)
A digital album of poetry by warsan shire. Thanks for this gem, Paarth.
Links of the Week
In love with this enormous fox that Finnish architect-designer Pasi Widgren ‘drew’ on a frozen lake + Ice Anatomy by Gheorghe Popa
20 Friend Date Ideas by Annika Hansteen-Izora. (I can’t wait to go on a color walk with my friends.)
Get your shit done (A productivity manifesto)
This interview between Tavi Gevinson and Stevie Nicks is wonderful!
Tavi Gevinson: I read that you’ve kept a journal every day since the beginning of Fleetwood Mac. Do you ever go back and re-read old entries?
Stevie Nicks: When I keep my journal, it’s big, like a telephone book, because I always feel that that will never get lost. So what I do is I write on the right side of the page, and then on the left-hand side I write poetry, which I usually take right out of my prose. So lots of times, when I go back to them, it’s to look at the poetry for songs. I would rather spend the time writing a new journal entry than going back and reading old journal entries, because if you go back you’re not going to go forward. I just try to keep going forward.Nishant Jain aka SneakyArtist’s Twitter thread on 5 Reasons to Write Regularly
A concept I’m pondering: Soft Fascination
In nature, our brains enter a mode called “soft fascination.”
Rachel Hopman, Ph.D., a neuroscientist at Northeastern University, described it as a mindfulness-like state that restores and builds the resources you need to think, create, process information, and execute tasks. It’s mindfulness without the meditation. A short daily nature walk—or even a walk down a tree-lined street—is a great option for people who aren’t keen on sitting and focusing on their breath. But turn off your phone—alerts from it can kick you out of soft-
fascination mode. (via)
A Dear Jasmine update :)
Before I end the newsletter, the writer behind our new (not an advice column) column Dear Jasmine wanted to thank you all for the tender questions you’ve asked. We’ve received 67 questions already, and they’re so real and human.
The first column comes out in March. Send in your questions here.
Wishing you a calm week ahead!
Rohini
The Marge Piercy poem is something else!
The poems in this issue really helped reinvigorate the poet in me, especially 'For the young who want to...' which does such a wonderful job of reaching right to that recess of the brain where aspirations hide from the fear of being found out and being killed by the pressure of their own existence.