Will today’s post be a paean to William Carlos Williams? No, it will not be a paean to William Carlos Williams. Deception helps my bide my time when I’m slouching on my Throne of Lies.
Today I’m tinkering with a new schedule, one which I hope will get the best writing out of me. Said writing, however, does not necessarily include the blog(s), which I will tackle only once I’ve lost my morning momentum. I’m much inclined to nap right now, but I’m forcing myself to jot down some thoughts. See? I can be quite thematic when I try.
The concept of the use of force also applies more generally to rhetoric, which is today’s minor fixation. Michigan has recently been witness to a spate of political ads by Obama detractors, and to a man, woman, and lobbyist, they seem really, really obsessed with shoehorning in the opportunity to say “change we can believe in” (referring to McCain) or “can’t believe in” (referring to Obama) in some form or fashion. This process strikes me as something akin to the promos used to shill cell phones to humans as the perfect Valentine’s Day/Mother’s Day/Arbor Day gift: I suppose the writers should be commended for attempting to create the occasion, but even the most casual viewer can judge those gymnastics with nominal effort. They could at least mix in an animated ocelot or something shiny to distract us. Maybe just a shiny ocelot.
These remarks, however, are just a prelude to the poetic fixation du jour. Call them post padding if you like; I will not say you are right, nor will I say you are wrong.
Every once in awhile I cross what seems like a significant threshold of technical development. In addition to the quantum leap I must credit to the editor who told me my work was unreadable (there was a time in my life, alas, when I eschewed articles, prepositions, and conjunctions), I’ve also made a few recognizable strides of my own accord. I have identified issues in person, line length, form, and other areas, and each recognition has yielded a minor revolution in my work. What I’ve isolated in the past few days is the expression of a less conspicuous but more pernicious tendency: I now can tell when I’m forcing the issue, trying to make a poem happen.
I make no claims to sprezzatura, but there are days when I make relatively steady progress. I creep forward line by line, and occasionally I perceive unexpected connections between them that cause me to cruise through a stanza or two. Sometimes, however–and this is especially true when I’m starting a new piece or building on a thematic impulse rather than an image–I simply commit pixels to the page whether they are (or I am) ready or not. I confess that some of my early verse consists of nothing but these forced lines, which is why I’ve gone back and cannibalized those files rather than trying to recollect the original motive of the poem. I might generate a few useful phrases along the way, but the attempt to leverage the language into some sensible vessel leaves the whole hopelessly compromised.
This is something like a negative gain, of course, at least insofar as I left today’s work behind after three satisfying lines and now find myself dwelling on the place where I left off, trying out new combinations in my head even as I type this sentence. But I suspect that giving in to this awareness and turning to other work rather than persisting for the sake of misguided diligence is likely to yield better work in the long run. Concession, in that sense, is the better part of valor.
