From the Peppercanister chapbook Love, Joy, Peace by one of Ireland’s most amazing poets, Thomas Kinsella:
Grace as routine.
The lone artificer loosening the charged facts
from an imagination arguing with itself
until the ache is eased—by the will, in tedium;
and the ache-object eased in its correctness
out of the containing inexactness.
This is ever been the greatest weakness of my practice: no routine. I write when moved to write, avoid prompts and exercises, generally fail to respond to occasions that cry out for such responses (not always, though, as with the BP spill in the Gulf). I admire the daily efforts of poets like Tom Montag, Hannah Stephenson, and Vassilis Zambaras, but am unable to emulate them. For a number of months, as off and on in the past, I kept a daily notebook; the contents were almost uniformly disappointing, though I foisted the best of it on you stalwart Birders. I apologize.
In the end, grace finds me only now and then, and when it does, there is no tedium involved. I feel bound by a concatenation of words, a cadence, a mood that can only survive in language; an hour or two later I look up to find the day’s light changed or the night deeper than I remember. Well, we take what is given us, according to our nature. Useless to try being anyone else.
Oh, those Muses… they (used to) just come<br />& go<br />my last one<br /><br />when I told her "You're my Onr True Muse"<br />she re:plied:<br /><br />"so i AMUSE YOU ? Don't send me anymore of your<br />stupid &^%$ing poems ! Call up me sometime."<br /><br />now?<br /><br />I take off from writing to work… it's a full-time job:<br /><br />
Thanks for the kind words, amigos. I suppose "routine" is the wrong word, though every poem is a journey; I meant the practice, the daily act, that I admire but can't sustain. The most horrendous summer of my life was the one I took off of work to write! It's my Muse's nature to flip me off and run away with the milkman if she hears the faintest crackle of an unfolding map.
Thanks, Joe, for your kind words but tell me: How is it possible for someone with no “routine” to write so many books which have been so highly praised by so many people? I think all of us most of the time feel as if we could improve our approach to our craft but yours still sounds like a winning recipe to me.
a lot of "poetry" in that last paragraph, Joe…<br /><br />just the 'tip of the….. plume?<br /><br />grace finds me<br />now and then<br />deeper than I <br />remember<br /><br /><br />this <br />cadence<br />that<br /><br />survive<br /><br />(etc ?)<br /><br />your words I "play" with….<br /><br />pardon me !
Ah, Joseph<br /><br />be no one but the delightfully personable,respectfully instructive and unflinchingly articulte "you". They always give the right touches to the few pieces you post.<br /> <br /><br />May we always be worthy of the 'grace' of poetry, indeed