No one doubts that writing poems is hard. At least, people that try and write a “good” poem and continuously fail. I have been trying for quite some time now (years) and have little to show in terms of creation. I have poems, but I know what is wrong with them, and they are not worth attempting to fix.
My main problem results from: I want to go back to writing without thinking about it so much, just write from impulse. However, I was writing like that when I was 17, in a hugely imitative Ginsberg/Whitman phase (yes, I even used the “O” in my poems). So in a way I don’t want it back. I blame school for taking that away from me. I learned how to think about writing in a different way, and I can’t say that it’s the best way because I’ve constantly faltered creatively because of it. Intellectually though, I know I have spread out my area of reading (though I still have found 20th Century American Poetry pre-1980, not just The Beats, to be my favorite). So schooling was a double-edged sword for me. But what is most important, is getting back to that early ideology behind creation while bringing along the things that I have learned throughout the years.
The Spicer lectures jarred me in a manner that I didn’t expect. Spicer’s metaphor of radio for poetic composition really got me thinking about where poems come from. Spicer argues that they come from the “Outside”, from what he antagonistically dubs “Martians”, and the poet is merely a receptor of these signals and attempts to interpret them as best as humanly possible. I’ve always liked to think that poems come from me, and even if i’m on some kind of automatic writing, it’s still me. However the fact that I am not in control is an appealing idea. One that might fit well into Spicer’s model, and more importantly, with my recent confusion.
And this is where I get to thinking about it too much.
And this is where I tell you that I am taking a break from writing poems. Though, what I might do is try to write fragments of things I’m telling myself not-to-do or what I shouldn’t do. Of course this still is a bit too mental for me, and yet again, therein lies the problem.
Another problem that comes in is that I can’t actually stop writing poems. Spicer says in one of his lectures that a person that wants to become a junky or a poet is a fool. The implications of this statement are far-reaching. Poems are addicting. Withdrawl from poems for too long makes me irritable. Poems are junk. I don’t think I’ll ever completely stop writing them because it’s what I’ve chosen to do, or maybe they chose me.
I think the best thing for poets to do, especially those going or graduating from school, is to not think about it so much, train yourself not to think about it. This is advice that comes from Spicer rather than myself, but in this context it applies tenfold.
Tags: Jack Spicer, automatic writing
