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ZERO POINT ZERO: Dry Spells, Dead Zones: the Hellish Facts of a Writer's Life

So the column is late again.

Since I'm coming off a short vacation early in the month, I'm feeling a tad sheepish about the fact that I'm apparently unable to talk about poetry right now.

I'm not even up for any fulminations against slam. Imagine that.

Here's the deal: many of you know I'm pretty adamantly opposed to the idea of writer's block. I simply don't believe in it; I think it's an excuse to not try, to not work through the inevitable fallow periods that fall into our lives.

Writers, and poets especially I suspect, seem tied to tides in their creative lives; things fall back, things cycle back in a surge of energy…but my own opinion is, you never stop writing; you never allow that cycling to rule your work habits. You write; you may discard, you may preserve, you may alter anything later even if you loathe it now, but you keep writing.

It's like training when you're not in competition – without it you get soft, you get lazy.

I'm in a bad dry spell right now, poetically. I know a couple of weeks ago I posted a whole week's worth of poems and writing from my blog, but I gotta tell you: the new stuff doesn't move me to want to pursue it. Now, I may find myself revisiting those poems at some point; I may let them go. But one thing I don't feel like doing is inflicting them on people.

It's tricky. The editing process for me involves reading a poem at a certain level of development to an audience; it's how I get what I call the 'taste of the poem�? into my mouth, how I work to learn how it feels in performance, how the words move into and around each other – that sort of thing.

But I feel like a poem has got to be 'ready�? before I try that. I wish I could define for you what 'ready�? means in this case; it's just something I know when I see it, much like pornography.

Lately, nothing feels ready.

When I'm working through these dead zones, I find it hard to put my energy onto the meta-craft that is this column: the analysis end of things, the ideas about art that I derive like nuggets of fools' gold from the stream of my work. I'm having so much trouble liking what I write that to speak of process seems dangerous, or at the least disingenuous; why should you listen to me?

But I keep working. I keep writing. I have no choice. It seems to me to be the only way to move myself through these dark nights of the soul; to keep doing what I doing in the interest of eventual results, because the results have always been there in the past.

Last week, I talked about poetry as a religious exercise for me, a spiritual practice that helps me add meaning to my life. This is the part where we talk about faith: the irrational thing that keeps you from hurtling off a balcony or hanging yourself or burning your poems or becoming a soulless drone in an easy to be soulless world.

While it's hard for me to speak of Hell, since I don't believe in it (even though I've been to Des Plaines IL) and can't conceive of something so permanent, I do think that we hold ourselves above our conception of Hell on our own trapezes of faith; that the act of sitting down with a pen and paper is the act of faith that is the only thing between the true artist and insanity.

It's the only thing we can do.

So the column's late this week because I've been balancing above Hell. It may be late again next week, it may not.

See you in the Big Top, either way. High above the absent net is where I'll be swinging. Join me, won't you?

Submitted by Tony on Sunday, August 29, 2004 (22:51:27) (1419 reads)

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"Features: ZERO POINT ZERO: Dry Spells, Dead Zones: the Hellish Facts of a Writer's Life" | Login/Create an Account | 3 comments

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Re: ZERO POINT ZERO: Dry Spells, Dead Zones: the Hellish Facts of a Writer�s Life (Score: 1 )
by think_so on Monday, August 30, 2004 (00:25:58)

High above the absent net -- that sounds like the title to something good.

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Re: ZERO POINT ZERO: Dry Spells, Dead Zones: the Hellish Facts of a Writer�s Life (Score: 1 )
by natey on Monday, August 30, 2004 (21:08:21)

You know, Tony, I have also been to Des Plaines, IL.

I feel for you.

-Natey.

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Re: ZERO POINT ZERO: Dry Spells, Dead Zones: the Hellish Facts of a Writer's Life
by Anonymous on Sunday, March 30, 2008 (01:50:37)

high above the absent net
where it is total chaos
there is plenty of talent there
not many vacant slots
chaos is where the thoughts begin
arguments , discussions , ayes , buts
spinning again , tied up in knots

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