I've been taking William Carlos Williams's lead lately in trying to understand how to balance work/necessity with poetry. WCW was a full time pediatrician and supposedly wrote poems on the backs of prescriptions slips in between delivering babies. He also famously held to the motto "No ideas but in things." I think "ideas" parallels "poetry" and "things" parallels labor. To really flesh out a poem involves retreating to some solitude and focus, regrouping your thoughts. But all the material for the poem has to come from the outside world. Interpreting WCW as an object-oriented poet (opposed to a platonic poet), the world of things begets the world of ideas. As a novice poet, I have spent a lot of time misguidedly thinking that writing should occur in an anchoritic vacuum-- that "the dream" for a writer is a "room of one's own," some perfect private office and infinite time to write there, not spending the majority of my time working some close to minimum wage job. Instead, I found that while I DO need solitude and a large chunk of uninterrupted time to really hone and finish projects, once I reached a point of really being serious about writing and wanting to do it for itself, to work on words, not simply "express myself" and emotions through bad poetry, I have found that I don't have to be in the immaculate workspace I thought I needed. There's enough rugged determination to try and put some words or sentences or ideas together in between ringing up customers or while mopping the floor, and to hastily jot notes down on my phone notepad or a napkin whenever possible. No more compartmentalizing [work, not fun, not proud, no creativity] and [coffee shop, study, joy, writing, me].
What's more, I don't feel that poetry and work are competing with each other (although I would ideally not work quite as many hours), but that work is a time to practice the unexamined life-- the lived life instead of the reflective life. It is a time to reach out to the public sphere, to serve others, to engage with the body as well as the mind. I can't say I'd ever choose to stock a cooler or scrub a toilet over retiring to a cottage to write all the days of my life, but that may be because I'm weak. Because there's a certain value, rugged and genuine, never to be romanticized but to enjoy very plainly, in toil. As Ecclesiastes says "What profit has a man for all his labor in which he toils under the sun?" and answers "For my heart rejoiced in all my labor / and this was the reward for all my labor." There is no point to our toil, except that we are illuminated in rejoicing at what is, at doing with all our hearts whatever our hand finds to do-- at not shirking or shying but embracing. And for all of the beauty of poetry and how much it adds to life, because life can thrive without poetry, the best life puts effort into thriving and loving the whole first, and then rejoicing that poetry, too, exists.
Here's a sketch of a poem, not polished, somewhat along these lines that I jotted down at work yesterday, channeling Marianne Moore :)
What's more, I don't feel that poetry and work are competing with each other (although I would ideally not work quite as many hours), but that work is a time to practice the unexamined life-- the lived life instead of the reflective life. It is a time to reach out to the public sphere, to serve others, to engage with the body as well as the mind. I can't say I'd ever choose to stock a cooler or scrub a toilet over retiring to a cottage to write all the days of my life, but that may be because I'm weak. Because there's a certain value, rugged and genuine, never to be romanticized but to enjoy very plainly, in toil. As Ecclesiastes says "What profit has a man for all his labor in which he toils under the sun?" and answers "For my heart rejoiced in all my labor / and this was the reward for all my labor." There is no point to our toil, except that we are illuminated in rejoicing at what is, at doing with all our hearts whatever our hand finds to do-- at not shirking or shying but embracing. And for all of the beauty of poetry and how much it adds to life, because life can thrive without poetry, the best life puts effort into thriving and loving the whole first, and then rejoicing that poetry, too, exists.
Here's a sketch of a poem, not polished, somewhat along these lines that I jotted down at work yesterday, channeling Marianne Moore :)
---
Nor should one discriminate against
sticky gas station storerooms
in all their dinginess
drab rows of tall boys and 40s
racks of dusty candy bars
hot dogs rolling in grease
Without romanticizing, one should
learn to wonder at hyper-
commonness. What is not
ancient enough to reflect on,
nor novel enough to desire
to reflect. But what is
banally immanent. The poet
should engineer the event.
It is through knowing death
is soon (“is always and is near”) we
do this. Every image becomes
important against the
threat of the abyss.
