The weeping willow has taken to screaming

[sovay]

An unexpected by-product of becoming an editor: a greater than usual disgust with my own work, because there is so much more bad writing of one kind or another in the world than I had even previously believed; I don't even have (even if I wanted) the latitude to be mediocre. And all the things I want most to write I don't think I have the intelligence to. I'm only high-concept when I dream. I go through this periodically, this burning despite for everything I write or think. I don't know if I come out of it a better writer or just lapse back into a kind of frustrated written-off complacency. I wrote poems last year I like better than poems from 2009. (I wrote some poems in 2009 I still don't hate.) I still can't know if that makes them good.

I didn't use to think I was ambitious. I just liked not to do things badly. I hate to be limited. Same old, same old. I saw Amadeus at the Old Vic when I was seventeen.

Anyway, on the brighter side, because there is also good writing in the world: Robin Robertson, "At Roane Head." Fucking best selkie poem I can remember reading. I'd buy the book for it. And someone is repainting Eurydike on the underground.

Comments

[thistleingrey.livejournal.com]

Mm, but it is impossible to see one's own work as one sees others' work. Even an editor cannot intervene in the latter to the extent that she can intervene in her own, which makes the perception of flaws to be rectified an entirely different thing, no? Plus, inevitable bias.

I am extrapolating somewhat from dissertation discussion/workshop groups, but I think that the core of these things is not so different.

Also, I like the pieces of your work that I've seen.