You are supposed to go on with your thinking
Saturday, January 30, 2010
"A poem doesn't do everything for you," this NYC step-stone reads (words first penned by Gwendolyn Brooks). "You are supposed to go on with your thinking."
I remembered these words yesterday, when talking with a friend that I call Rachel's Bill about what it is that I try to do with my work–and how for some it's too much (too much language!) and for some it's too little (too little plot!) and for some it's nothing (why, she's practically mediocre!) and for some it is the thing that does somehow provoke or encourage a going-forward with their thinking. I was grateful to Rachel's Bill for letting me talk not about how books get published (and what happens to them afterward), but how I go about making mine—the muscularity of the experience (he understands, I promise), the discovery of the story inside the music of the prose, the eighty drafts, and the waiting to know.
I tend, in real life, not to talk too much, for fear of not being able to stop, once I get started. It's a special thing to have someone stand there at a dance party and nod his head and not make you regret yourself later.
