Words’ Worth, Part Two

A few years ago I led some creativity groups based on Julia Cameron’s best-selling self-help book, The Artist’s Way. Julia Cameron’s advice for creative people is to start your day writing three pages, whatever comes into your mind. If nothing comes into your mind, just keep writing. Eventually, you will hit onto something interesting, something with heart. There’s always been discussion among writers about this point. Should one map out the writing and then write, or should one begin with a vague idea, and let the story emerge? I remember reading an interview with the novelist, John Irving, who essentially said, You’d better plan out your work ahead of time and follow the plan. If you don’t do it that way, you’re not an author; you’re simply a transcriber.

I’m beginning to think about Irving’s opinion more seriously than I did a few years ago when I read the interview. At that time, I thought his plan eliminated the opportunity for magic to happen in the work.

Last week I shared James Wright’s poem, Lying in a Hammock at William Duffy’s Farm in Pine Island, Minnesota. After describing simple beauty and pastoral scenes, the poet ends with the line, “I have wasted my life.” It’s a surprise ending, the kind of magic that doesn’t happen when you’ve mapped everything out ahead of time. It’s the kind of surprise I love to find in my reading.

I don’t think I’ve wasted my life, but I’ve been thinking about that poem a lot lately.  I’ve always (or almost always) been living the best way I know how, just like everyone else. Jim and I have raised-up charming and interesting men of character from babies. That’s been my favorite part of life. When we still had our parents and our sons were at home I felt the most engaged in the world, the closest thing I have ever felt to powerful. Now they’re out there finding their own paths. And I’m at home looking at boxes of journals filled with random lovely sentences and scattered imaginative thoughts dropped into the drivel. All that time I spent wringing my heart out on paper is confusing me now. Life isn’t clean; it’s not clear. Even what is clear muddies eventually.

Self-evaluation stinks. You just gotta go with what you’ve got.

A Blessing

By James Wright

Just off the highway to Rochester, Minnesota,

Twilight bounds softly forth on the grass.

And the eyes of those two Indian ponies

Darken with kindness.

They have come gladly out of the willows

To welcome my friend and me.

We step over the barbed wire into the pasture

Where they have been grazing all day, alone.

They ripple tensely, they can hardly contain their happiness

That we have come.

They bow shyly as wet swans. They love each other.

There is no loneliness like theirs.

At home once more,

They begin munching the young tufts of spring in the darkness.

I would like to hold the slenderer one in my arms,

For she has walked over to me

And nuzzled my left hand.

She is black and white,

Her mane falls wild on her forehead,

And the light breeze moves me to caress her long ear

That is delicate as the skin over a girl’s wrist.

Suddenly I realize

That if I stepped out of my body I would break

Into blossom.

James Wright, “A Blessing” from Above the River: The Complete Poems and Selected Prose. Copyright 1990 by James Wright.

 

Words’ Worth (*Part One)

Once, during high school, we wrote short stories. While I was sitting by the bay window in our living room and composing my story, I drifted into a trance and when I finished my story, it seemed like the thing had written itself. That piece of writing, I believe, is the only thing during thirteen, and possibly sixteen years of formal education, that ever garnered attention, or praise. At the time, I thought, “It’s too bad I’m not one of the people who can make a life pursuing a dream” which, for me, from that moment was to become a writer.

Eventually, maybe twenty-five years later, I did grab onto the dream, and begin writing. For a few years now, I’ve been getting rid of stuff, truckloads of it, five or ten things at a time. Right now, I am eyeing furniture and photographs. I was sifting through my old journals, stories, poems, and book drafts, which I have recently gathered all into one place. But honestly, after two afternoons of that, I had to give it up for now; it’s made me too sad. I keep looking at these boxes full of ink-filled paper, and thinking of a favorite poem.

 Lying in a Hammock at William Duffy’s Farm in Pine Island, Minnesota

By James Wright

Over my head, I see the bronze butterfly,

Asleep on the black trunk,

Blowing like a leaf in green shadow.

Down the ravine behind the empty house,

The cowbells follow one another

Into the distances of the afternoon.

To my right,

In a field of sunlight between two pines,

The droppings of last year’s horses

Blaze up into golden stones.

I lean back, as the evening darkens and comes on.

A chicken hawk floats over, looking for home.

I have wasted my life.

from Above the River: The Complete Poems and Selected Prose. Copyright � 1990 by James Wright.

Source: Above the River: The Complete Poems and Selected Prose (1990)

*Not the end; just the beginning.