RonPrice
Sep 28, 2005, 08:18 AM
ASPIRATION AND OCCUPATION
“Poet” names an aspiration not an occupation... Once a poem is resolved, I lose the sense of having written it. I can remember circumstances, but not sensations, not what it felt like to be writing. This amnesia is almost immediate and most complete when poems are written quickly, but in all cases it occurs. Between poems I am not a poet, only someone with a yearning to achieve-what? That concentration again. -Louise Gluck, Proofs and Theories: Essays on Poetry, Ecco Press, NY, 1994, p.125.
I lose the sense of
Even having written it.
It’s like someone else’s.
It surprises me;
I may remember some trace element,
Some vague origin, circumstance.
Yes, being a poet, like being a Baha’i,
Is an aspiration.
It often feels like an occupation
Because of the intensity, energy,
Time, thought, devoted to the process,
Especially when the flow comes
As fast as it has in recent years.
I must stop now: it makes me tired
Even thinking of it.
Ron Price
15 October 1995
“Poet” names an aspiration not an occupation... Once a poem is resolved, I lose the sense of having written it. I can remember circumstances, but not sensations, not what it felt like to be writing. This amnesia is almost immediate and most complete when poems are written quickly, but in all cases it occurs. Between poems I am not a poet, only someone with a yearning to achieve-what? That concentration again. -Louise Gluck, Proofs and Theories: Essays on Poetry, Ecco Press, NY, 1994, p.125.
I lose the sense of
Even having written it.
It’s like someone else’s.
It surprises me;
I may remember some trace element,
Some vague origin, circumstance.
Yes, being a poet, like being a Baha’i,
Is an aspiration.
It often feels like an occupation
Because of the intensity, energy,
Time, thought, devoted to the process,
Especially when the flow comes
As fast as it has in recent years.
I must stop now: it makes me tired
Even thinking of it.
Ron Price
15 October 1995