To all the people who write when they aren’t writing, especially Jo, I dedicate this:
WRITING on NOT WRITING
I can feel my ship about to come in.
A white ship in a snowstorm
moving in.
The ship is made of gulls
huddled together
in the shape of a ship.
When it arrives, they will fly out into the storm,
leaving a space inside it
clear as reason.
I can tell there’s going to be a blizzard
of being somewhere else
any minute
because of time’s noise eating itself up
that is the noise of listening
that looks like a seething, florid whiteout of wings.
-Jack Myers
Dear Gretchen Joanna, thank you:) – the noise of listening.. I especially like that phrase. I am hoping to see that space as clear as reason. It is coming..
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that’s really beautiful, thank you!
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Hi GJ! That’s an interesting poem.
Your snowdrops are incredible! I hope you are well.
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Lovely! I live close to the ocean so have experienced just this thing.
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I think what the poet is describing is pretty depressing for a writer – your words coming together in an unstable way and then “flying off” to leave empty space on the page again. “Whiteout” does not have a good connotation in this context either… Is there a deadline coming up?… a blizzard of words…florid… none of these sounds like the kind of success a writer is aiming for, especially a poet.
But it’s a delight to see how Myers has taken a writer’s frustration and written about that in a picture with so much life in it. The only other thing I have read that sheds so much light on the experience is Annie Dillard’s remark about “alligator wrestling at the level of the sentence.”
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