April 2010

Styles

Do you fear style in poetry?

Do you skeptic it?

Once the style is figured out, does it become less impactful?

My favorite writers are styled.

Their words have good hair.

Lack of style seems to be what keeps good words from becoming distinguished words.

I still look for things that I think are “cool”

“Cool” I think appeals to the mind more than the heart.

It doesn’t need to be overt.

“Cool” is the neon sign that comes to mind when reading Cows by Frederic Boyer just published in the new Puerto Del Sol

V.
The cows are useful and sure. Their existence is an infinite number of successive
presents.
It is thus understandable with what pleasure we exterminated them.
The cows are only themselves when gathering into their own finitude the infinite
totality in which they found themselves. Beneath a tree. In a meadow. On the earth
lost in the universe.
The human being is quickly jealous of the cows. Oh, if only the gods would arm
me with such power—comes the muffled voice of tiny Telemachus that is held in The
Odyssey.
The cows don’t read what’s in our hearts. They don’t understand us any better
than we understand ourselves. They ask neither for our recognition nor our gratitude
nor our hate as we ask it of ourselves. And never have we contemplated them in their
truth.
Thought, the cows immediately knew in our presence, betrays general indifference.
It’s only when dangers become evident that indifference ends. In our presence
the cows learned this at their own expense.

Craft Notes / 30 Comments
April 1st, 2010 / 12:17 pm

Writerly Make Believe

(Found Magazine)

A little while ago I was assigned the seemingly menial task of re-typing a chapter of Hans Fallada’s Wolf Among Wolves since, at the time, there was no digital copy in existence. What seems like it might have been a mind-numbing endeavor was actually one of my favorite chores while I was interning at Melville House. You can learn a tremendous amount about a writer by faking being them for a little while. You get to see the scaffolding of each sentence and you’re really forced to pay attention to every single syllable of every word. After I read something I really admire (or sometimes during) I often open up Word and start typing it in, word by word, sometimes spending hours on it. (And I wonder why I can’t find the time to post here.) I suppose it’s a dangerous habit to get into if you’re not the type to stop a project before it’s finished, but I still love wasting time this way.

Craft Notes / 75 Comments
April 1st, 2010 / 12:40 am