Kristy loves her blog, but I'm obsessed with mine. I'm a little embarrassed every time I look at my archives and realize that I post almost every day, sometimes more than once a day. It seems to be the ultimate form of narcissiscm to think people actually care what I have to say that often.
And then I get annoyed when everyone else doesn't blog as often as I do. I need something to read! As if the 300 and some books immediately to my left don't count as reading material. What can I say? I like to know what poets who actully get published on a regular basis think...maybe they'll rub off on me. Maybe, by reading some editor's blog, I can figure out the right poems to send. Maybe I'm just lonely and should start calling my friends when I have the urge to commune with my psuedo-internet-friends. Maybe.
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Also, I've been seeing a lot these days about people being anti-MFA, and frankly, it annoys me. All right, hold on. I'm not saying if you want to be a writer you have to get one, I'm just saying, if you don't want one, can't afford one, or whatever, stop telling people who do, and can, that they shouldn't. Doing this was absolutely the right decision for me and if I wasn't here, I'd still be working in HR, trying to write a crappy romance novel, and I wouldn't have ever realized that my real passion is poetry.
Okay, so it is expensive. My education is costing me about as much as a small house on the poor side of Akron. But my education is going to last a hell of a lot longer than that house. And it won't get termites. Bad analogy, I know. But it's an investment--in me. Not in my career, b/c we all know how lucrative that is going to be. I think it's better to be poor at 26 and loving what I'm doing than it was to be financially stable at 23 and completely lost emotionally and mentally.
So, if you're a writer and you're lucky enough to find a community of writers that you respect, you're lucky enough to have the discipline and the time to study the craft and practice and revise on your own, then congratulations. I needed structure, guidance, and support. Not deadlines...those are arbitrary. I can give myself deadlines and I can follow them, but if I wasn't in school I'd just keep writing the same thing over and over again because I couldn't figure out on my own what wasn't working.
Really, I think the whole debate is about as stupid as whether chocolate or vanilla is better. It's a matter of opinion, and I get mad whenever I hear people spouting off opinions as fact. (Pot & kettle? Perhaps)
And that's enough of that.
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I've been reading a lot this week, along with my crazy fluke of prolificness. Joy Harjo's She Had Some Horses, Philip Levine's What Work Is, and Hemingway's A Moveable Feast. Do you hear "which one of these is not like the other?" from Sesame Street in your head? Me too. But I decided my persona reads Hemingway, which means now I have to. I read The Sun Also Rises when I was a junior in high school and loved it, but when I took a Hemingway and Fitzgerald seminar in college, I felt like Hemingway paled next to Fitzgerald and didn't enjoy his stuff very much. So I'm going back to it, to see what I might have missed. I like that it's quick reading, but still it's not coming to life for me. Maybe the memoir isn't the right place to start. It seems I can sum it up like this: "went to the cafe. went to the track. talked to gertrude stein. went back to the cafe. talked to another famous writer. had sex with my wife. went to the cafe." There are some interesting moments when he talks about writing, but for the most part...eh.
I've always felt like a little bit of a fraud because I don't like most of the fiction that English majors are supposed to rave about. Vonnegut? He's alright. Faulkner? Never finished anything I was supposed to read of his. Sentences and paragraphs are not synonyms. Henry James? I'd rather poke my eyeballs out than pick up The American again. I did love Steinbeck's East of Eden, but wasn't nearly as impressed with The Pearl. Grapes of Wrath? Haven't read it. Why can't I get my head around the stuff I'm "supposed" to like? Is there something wrong with me, or does everyone else just pretend to like it? Am I the only one who's no good at faking it?
Poem: Far Gone
2 days ago
6 comments:
One of my poems has something like this:
I can't read
Henry James for two
minutes without sticking
a fork in my leg.
That sentiment is taken from my real life.
Steve, I think I love you!
Sara,
I say good for your for doing the MFA. I would absolutely love to do one after I get my teacher certification (though certainly not immediately). But your right. They are sooo expensive. I don't get it. I wonder if the price will ever come down the way electronics do. But I crave everything an MFA offers, particularly the community of writers that you talk about. There are a few of us at IUSB that have been working hard at keeping the flame buring in that aspect, and it has really come a long way in the past year, but there are always people who graduate, move on, and the ball gets dropped. And like you, I likde what the blog world has to offer for poets and writers. Sometimes I think I'm asking too much of these blogs. Since the semester has ended I have gotten way too into this blog thing. I have a compulsion to check once, twice, three times a day, mine and everyone in my favorites, and to add a blog daily, so as not to upset my "fans" (ha!).
I like Hemingway, but not everything. The first Hemingway I read was A Farewell to Arms and I really loved it. I also loved A Moveable FEast, but moreso because it dealt with the era that I love to read about. I'm a big Fitsgerald fan(I wanted to name my daughter Zelda, but Joe wouldn't go for it). So I think that is why, rather than the actual writing.
Hemingway's last line, "Wouldn't it be pretty to think so?" is one of the best. last. lines. ever. Reason enough to read him.
But a lot of the macho fiction you're supposed to read is a freaking foreign language to me. I hated Faulkner (though liked Hemingway and Fitzgerald, go figure.) The Russians are great - Tolstoy and Dostoyevsky, and the french romantics like Victor Hugo are fun as well. I'e been getting into Japanese post-first-world-war novelists too. And Salinger. But most of the fiction I luuurve is by women - AS Byatt and Margaret Atwood have provided countless hours of poetry inspiration for me.
Fiction for Poets - shouldn't that be a legitamate MFA class?
Sara,
I tagged you.
Talia, I didn't forget your tag, but I'm going to have to think on it for a little while.
Jeannine, I'm glad I'm not the only one! There are definitely some shining moments in Hemingway, but I don't think he'll ever make my list of favorites.
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