marginalia

[kaberett]

Via Captain Awkward, an essay on essays; for myself, I wish to preserve:

In his Letters to a Young Poet, Rilke writes that “a work of art is good if it has sprung from necessity.”

This makes me (1) wish to read Letters to a Young Poet (ah, super, except what the fuck people still use iframes?!) and (2) have a lot of my ongoing feelings about the poetry I write because I can't but write it, versus the poetry I write as practice (and as performative), which in turn leads into (3) my current attempts to articulate the ways in which I learn in public performatively, and how much I admire people who pull it off without the self-consciousness I don't seem to be able to help but drag with me.

Comments

[syntaxofthings]

And tables to style it! :D

Also wanting to read that at some point.

[kaberett]

Seem to be lots of English translations online, but nothing on Gutenburg :-( Clearly I should make an ebook of the German version and upload it...

[syntaxofthings]

Weird! Gutenburg tends to be the way to go. In any case, my German could use some practice, so at least there's that link. (I'm sure Gutenburg at least has the German version, right?)

[kaberett]

Gutenberg genuinely has no copies of his letters at all as far as I can see...

[jelazakazone]

I was thinking that the quilts I make are not made out of necessity, but actually, my mental health demands that I make them, so I guess it is a sort of necessity, isn't it?

[kaberett]

Yep -- though, to be clear, for all I resonate to urgent napkin poems and guitars and drums and desperate poetry, and for all I am still sorting out my feelings, I remain unconvinced that art-of-necessity is "better", in any sense?

[jelazakazone]

Oh definitely! I mean, I think that there is an urgency, or rawness, or intensity that is born of that type of art, but I also think it benefits from editing and refinement. It is most likely not going to be the end product.

[quirkytizzy]

That essay about essays you linked to is AMAZING. Also, extremely on target. So many people don't really understand the purpose of writing - it's not always to convey ONE CERTAIN THING of SCIENCE AND ACADEMY AND PURE KNOWLEDGE. It IS about conveying things, yes, and you DO have to be certain on WHAT you are conveying (even if that thing is that you have NO IDEA WHAT to convey), but it doesn't have to have a formula, and there's always room for reworking it.

The English language and the way we can write it such an art, so beautiful, and we kill it for so many people even before they learn their own voice.

I got really, really lucky in that I was drawn to poetry at a young age, so a lot of the "rules" about writing were learned with this little voice in the back of my head that goes "Hey, rules are important, but so is DELIVERY, and sometimes the DELIVERY CAN MAKE the message!"

(I'm rambling. Sorry. I do that when I talk about writing.)

Also, I don't believe it when people say writing is the one place where they are confident all the time. I can believe it when people say writing is the one place where they know themselves, and THAT could, possibly, lead to confidence, but writing isn't a panacea for self-doubt.

As May Sarton, one of my favorite authors and poets said - "Writing isn't a way out. It's a way IN."

[silveradept]

I think that article should be required reading for anyone who wants essays. Or any other form of writing. Kids need to have their creative modes encouraged, not constrained into the narrow box of standardized test rubrics.