I have been flagging poems I like from The Pushcart Book of Poetry, and am now halfway through the anthology. It is excellent. Here is my list so far: Continue Reading “Shortlist from the Pushcart Book of Poetry (Part I)”
William Stafford’s honesty about the writing process is irresistible. Over and over again in Writing The Australian Crawl he admits to some remarkable points: that there is no such thing as skill, that anyone can write, that getting over writer’s block is simply a matter of lowering one’s standards, that editors are friends put on Earth to help us keep back work that should not be in print, that criticism shuts down the creative process fast, and that defending or justifying the significance of one’s work is not the writer’s job.
Above all, he seems to confirm–from many different angles–what I have been discovering in my own journey from criticism to craft: that the tools of criticism are simply not well suited to the task of writing well. What you need, from Stafford’s point of view, is willingness to keep writing. He revealed that the vast majority of what he wrote he never sent out, and of the writing he did think publication-worthy, only one-tenth was ever published. While one could argue that this was only his particular approach and style, having such an interesting writer admit to his own process like this debunks a whole lot of nonsense about any determinate meaning-making approach to art. Everywhere in this book Stafford seems to be saying, instead, “Just keep writing.”
Continue Reading “William Stafford, Writing the Australian Crawl”
Robert Peake's poems have appeared in Iota, North American Review, Rattle, and others.
