A few poetry items from around the Internet:
"I don't look on poetry as closed works. I feel they're going on all the time in my head and I occasionally snip off a length."- John Ashbery
I received the following e-mail in relation to an earlier post.
Dear Mr. Wells-
I won't presume to post my comment on your Stickpoet site, but I was surprised to see you refer to Dr. Goddard as a German. He was a Massachusetts boy, born and raised.
Your point about the correspondence between failures in poetry and rocketry, though, is well taken.
With my best regards-Guy
Well Guy, you are quite correct. As a child I was quite interested in rocketry and read a good deal about the pioneering of the early space program. Even as I was posting this the other night there was a nagging part of me that was thinking Goddard did not seem especially German in origin, but after more years than I care to admit, that was my recollection. It was in fact Dr. Wernher von Braun a rocket pioneer as well that I was thinking of. Von Braun was German but later became an American citizen and brought with him a wealth of knowledge that benefited America's early entry into space exploration. The problem is, that while I can straighten this much out I'm afraid I can no longer be certain to which of these two men this quote belongs. I tend to lean towards Goddard as originally designated, but I will attempt to clarify this in a subsequent post but for now, the matter of Goddard's birth and nationally is settled. As Guy acknowledged he is Massachusetts born and raised. Thus, quite American.
Guy seems content to let my connection to poetry and rocketry stand.
Kind of a silly question on one hand. I mean do any of us put stock in mythology? I have been known to feel of times a muse has visited me and have cursed the times when they have left me high and dry. But the poet Ann Lauterbach rejects the idea of the muse and insists that she's not as much interested in inspiration as she is "in the riddle of making something."
In a P & W article in the May/June 09 issue Lauderbach talks about a process where once she gets words on a page she has to have a conversation. The poem is a form she argues and she says to the words, "How can I help you become a poem?" As a poet, she believes she has to become a most generous and critical reader. She likens it to being a really good parent. " I might say to the poems "you can't go there," but they respond "yes, I can." All this sounds a bit like standing on your head and stacking BBs.
I have to consider if I ask as much of words on the page as I should? Is there too much emphasis on trying to get it right the first time?
Writing is so very different from the general work ethic that stresses doing it right the first time so you don't waste time redoing it. We write to rewrite to rewrite and that runs against the normal work ethic.
I'm reminded of Dr. Robert Goddard, the German known as the father of modern rocketry. He maintained that there was no such thing as failure in rocketry. You are always learning- always striving to improve. Perhaps that should be the mantra for poets as well. "No such thing as failure in poetry."
Senator Jeff Sessions, Rush Limbaugh, Newt Gingrich and others who have expressed such tremendous concern about the "life experiences" of Supreme Court nominee Sotomayor and how she might apply those experience, including her own heritage to her judicial work might want to listen to the words of Justice Samuel Alito on January 11, 2006.