a reminder
on saturday i woke up early and lay in bed for a long time. things got sadder; by 10am i was checking facebook on my phone. a friend’s status update indicated that franz wright had been in town for a reading the night before. i quietly damned myself for not knowing about it, then idly googled to take stock of what i’d missed only to discover another event was scheduled—a q&a—at 10:30 that morning. i crawled out of bed, threw on clothes, dithered over whether to bring a book of his for signing (i did not), and showed up only 10 minutes late. the audience was made up of half a dozen middle-aged women in fleece & dansko clogs, a smattering of students, and me.
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bits and pieces of what he said, from my notes:
on translation:
“it’s geometry”
“like taking apart a small watch or engine and putting it back together again”
“and in the end, you don’t harm the original”
on motivation:
“this line from Roethke’s book of prose has been with me all these years, ‘the poem is the result of having been in terrible danger’”
on complexity:
“my father used to say about robert bly, ‘his main ambition is to turn The Iliad into a haiku’”
on being:
“humility is the infinite power”
on being a man:
“crying is second only to the shame of failing to live longer than everyone you know”
on being a poet in america:
“you can say anything you fucking please, and we won’t pay attention to you. we’ll just starve you to death. in russia they listened and they killed you”
on the miraculous:
“we have a terrible need to reconnect with that feeling that we are here for some awesome illustrious purpose”
“something takes care of us; if you throw yourself off the cliff you are caught”
Post Notes
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brianmlatimer reblogged this from unrepentant
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thenelsontwins reblogged this from unrepentant
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winesburgohio said:
this is wonderful.
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