3 posts tagged “writing”

Marion

4 comments

                    I was doing highflying acrobatics with my former stepmother above an outdoor restaurant called Palio's in Ann Arbor.  All of the tables had exquisite flowers on them and the dishes looked like art.  She and I were going to run a marathon afterwards so she said, "It's OK if you need to walk sometimes."  I haven't seen her in a long time.  I wonder why my subconscious pulled her up.  There was a man in the dream; he was the instructor in a tight leotard (remember Lyotard's The Postmodern Explained [to children]--"we are in a time of ana"--like analysis).  Well I think I have been metaphorically performing lately, performing my craft for an audience, which I do like to do.  What other tricks can I pull out of my hat?...

***

Gilles Poem 18:  for Herem Calls Out From A Dream But Michel Doesn't Hear Him 

by Sabrina Calle

O my Gilles                please, stop              help me break this                 I will say nothing

                                      "it is minor and unexceptional"          it

             hurts so much             like this:                  .                    don't laugh, I have

called everyone in the book (twice)             so, "Faut-il bruler Kafka?"             I want to drive

because we don't see much difference                        amongst all these things

adsum, as you wish it                         Gilles, yr giving me that face, just tell me                   already

what to find

"look: --I bought you a map of the world"                             stop.  this

is not your suit              who has been here?                what is a chain or stool?             a wine glass

warmed by bourbon                  no, it has not been long enough                                                       or

maybe it

                is something                         we've not discussed                           would you prefer

abstract machines                  surge into existence by themselves                     without indexes?

I am walking out of view

                                                  Michel says           "be dear, and drop out a while"

The role of the writer is not to say what we can all say, but to say what we are

unable to say.—Anais Nin

When it comes to writing and the teaching of writing, as the poet and art critic Frank O'Hara famously stated in his essay "PERSONISM:  A MANIFESTO" (Yugen, 1961), you just go on your nerve.  If someone is chasing you down the street with a knife you don't turn around and shout, "Give it up, I was a track star for The University of Michigan!"  You just run.  This is like writing.  You don't flounce out your credentials every time you have an important piece to write or teach to write.  You just write it.  In "PERSONISM" O'Hara posits an attitude in writing in which one of its minimal aspects is to address itself to one person (other than the writer herself), thus putting the writing squarely between two people and not between two pages.  This makes the writing more intimate or revelatory.  It makes the writing an arrow from me to you.

Within the writing classroom there should be room for experimentation.  I want a classroom that is defined by experimentation and openness.  I want a classroom in which students will feel free to consult with each other on their essays, poetry, or term papers.  Or at least I want a classroom in which it will be possible for students to do so.  In the teaching of writing there should be no "forced feeding" as O'Hara says, there should be no enforcement of writing doctrine for doctrine's sake.  Students should be brought into the state of being where they want to write.  This state of being should be encouraged and nourished by the teacher by reading to them or having them read new pieces of writing by which they will be moved to write.  O'Hara's "PERSONISM" is one piece of writing that has effectively moved students in the near past.  Ezra Pound's dictum on modernism, "Make It New," applies both to the kind of materials with which the students should be nourished and which they produce.  Quality in writing should be stressed.  The students should feel that their writing is a form of art and as an art form it can be as vibrant as Bruegel’s “The Wedding Dance” or as stunning and simple as Fra Angelico’s “Annunciatory Angel.”  While I believe that writing is a process, I also believe that there is room inside of the process for experimentation and spontaneity.  Without this room for experimentation writing wouldn’t provide the joy and satisfaction that it does provide when it is done well.