sovay | The weeping willow has taken to screaming

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The weeping willow has taken to screaming

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.

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Wow, that poem is amazing. Thanks for linking!

The Robertson poem is amazing, and I much like the Eurydike on the Underground as well. Thank you for sharing.

I wish you could see your own work as I see it. It's not limited. It is good.

He makes me swoon. And I always associate him with selkies, thanks to Swithering and a poem in that collection I can't remember the title to. I suspect it's "Selkie" now that I've admitted to not remembering. Ends That's me away.

And, heh. An intensification of self-awareness (?) and self-blargh (?) is certainly a hazard of editing. I imagine chasing it away with a broom - one of those impractical looking ones found at ren fair stalls.

I mean this very respectfully, but are you crazy? When I first read a few of your poems, what I understood as the limits of possibility in poetry shifted up a few levels of excellence. I'm still integrating that shift. I don't even have words to explain how GOOD your writing is. Please don't stop writing. It would be like painting over Eurydike.

I realize that things like this don't make any difference to the inner editor, let alone the inner critic, but please try to take me somewhat seriously, even though I am not a good poet or a very skilled reader.

and all the things I want most to write I don't think I have the intelligence to.

You and me both.

Edited 2011-01-31 06:42 (UTC)

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.

Oh, thank you for linking to that poem. It's amazing.

It is really impossible to assess the quality of one's own work, because it's so difficult to be surprised by it. Do persevere.

To me it seems strange that seeing so much poor stuff should make you disgusted with your own stuff, which is so obviously not-that. I would have expected that it would have the opposite effect and make you think, "Well, however my stuff fails to satisfy me, at least it's not as bad as X." But maybe with your own stuff you lack perspective and are afraid it **is** as bad as X?

And my poor, limited brain just boggles at the thought that you find yourself not intelligent enough to write the things you want to write. It makes me think there must be whole vistas that you can see that I can't possibly imagine. But all right; I can accept that's true.

I can sort of understand something of your feeling, maybe, if I imagine that you want to go places with your poetry that you haven't been to yet. I can imagine, just about, being dissatisfied with the sorts of poems that you're very good at (which still give people like me pleasure, that's for sure) and wanting to do something different, wanting to visit different places....

There are other thoughts brewing in the back of my head, but I've already spent a lot of words to say not much, so I'll let it go. If they ever approach some level of persuasive articulateness, I'll write them down. Or maybe even if they do, I'll spare you. (In any case, they're not approaching articulateness right now, so for right now you're most definitely spared.)

one of those impractical looking ones found at ren fair stalls.

:D

I've seen these brooms. I like this imagining.

And someone is repainting Eurydike on the underground.

Good! I didn't know they'd removed it! I remember walking along that underpass in my first year of uni and having to slow down so I could read it all, and being awed. I didn't know that it was such an old, mythical katabasis at the time; it felt perfect for disappearing and journeying under London, and whenever I write my London book I am quoting that poem liek whoa.

Well, I suppose it is London, intentionally; it must be, with lines like "Steel tracks lead you out / past cranes and crematoria, / boat yards and bike sheds, ruby shards / of roman glass and wolf-bone mummified in mud". It feels so right to mythologise it.

Oh, I adore Robin Robertson. I was introduced to his writing by hearing him read it in Ottawa, in an underground pub a few doors down from the bookstore at which I worked. Thank you for sharing that!

Now, as for you.

It makes me helplessly furious when writers whose work I love beyond all reckoning say they are disgusted with it. Furious, because how dare they, that work invents new colours of wonderful; helpless, because I know what it is to feel that it isn't enough in my own work, and that no amount of my telling them otherwise will sway their opinion, because the gulf between what they want and what they do will always only be perceptible to their own inward gazes, and has nothing to do with me.

Still.

I'm only high-concept when I dream

is a poem in itself. Further, I reject the logic of your first sentence. So there.

This sounds so familiar.

I never feel like I've gotten better? But then the old stuff looks so BAD.

Oh, she's been like that for at least two decades, and is not all that old. (I'm not discounting or ridiculing anything you've said, I think it's true. I'm just telling you that she has a deep-seated wellspring of contempt for her own body of work that no amount of scourging can drive away. Maybe everyone does.)

Your impostor syndrome is apparently grating off my impostor syndrome. It must be the weather.

I did like that fellow's poem, though it seems a shame for the Great Selkie's children to be not quite right. Everyone of note knows that most selkies' children are conventionally attractive and developmentally superior.

And a very bitter cosign over here.

Your work is amazing. You are therefore not amazed. I'll bet that Robertson, astounding as "At Roane Head" is, feels inadequate and underwhelming. I certainly do. It's the writerly condition and it's agony. Damn it.

I am so glad that Euridike on the underground is being restored--and in the proper font!

Nine

That's a really powerful poem - thank you for sharing. One so rarely sees poetry - or any genre work - about disabled children. Although, sadly, they most usually wind up dead.

The feelings of inadequacy and gloom accompany editorial work for me as well, alas.

Slush did that to me as well. It wasn't the bad. The truly awful, miserable and misbegotten was refreshing, and I love the man who had the stones to copy-paste Cormac McCarthy's The Road as an epic fantasy, because it was, for all its sins (flat out word-for-word plagiarism) not the grinding, kind of competent with some flaws, but nothing bright, nothing good, nothing true stuff that flowed into my queue, like... well, slush. Worse were the things that did have something going for them, a little piece of brilliance like a pretty stone on an otherwise cheap ring that occasionally turns into an angry spider and bites your finger.

And then you try to write. It's like being a dermatologist who has to go out in the evening and makes up their face in a magnifying mirror in a room with fluorescent lighting. Every pore is large enough to sink a well-placed putt.

Then there is the hell of seeing your influences abused by someone whose hands should be slapped away from those books until they develop sufficient mastery to deal with Ramona Quimby. Then you see the same influence in your own work and you want to tear it out and sew up the places where it came out and then burn the work and hide it somewhere.

You get low.

But trust in this: you have some things that the people in your slush pile have not, and those do make all the difference. You have a point of view, you have something to say. A few of those people will get that, too, someday, and stop depressing the hell out of their editors, some will be satisfied knowing they tried and some will be bitter... You know what, to each their own road, with my blessing, whatever it's worth. We won't talk about them.

I don't even have (even if I wanted) the latitude to be mediocre.

I won't say you don't have the capacity, because no one doesn't, but I have never witnessed you being mediocre, so I remain skeptical.

And all the things I want most to write I don't think I have the intelligence to.

Word. I mean, we do get better at this, if we try, but it's always the best ideas that are just out of reach, just another box or crate or step ladder on top of the creaky, swaying tower of ability, and such a risk of fucking up and losing that beautiful thing forever, or, worse having it come halfway down, and be all bruised and ruined when you bring it home (Sun Seed Sickle and Scythe for instance). There are so many cool stories that are well within my comfort level to do, and I like to think I would be a lot happier if I could just do those, but that's not how it seems to work.

I'm only high-concept when I dream.

I really wish I could say "fuck high concept" but I can't, because I secretly wish I could write high concept. Or just write something I understood before I wrote it.

Thanks for the links to the poems - they were perfect for brightening my stuffy-headed morning.
I think your poems are very good. I always enjoy reading them when you post them here, and sometimes they sing to me. But I completely understand the feeling of disgust wuth one's own work. I think most artists go through that. Certainly with everything I write there is a point (usually when I'm just past halfway done) where I am convinced that the piece is just garbage. We're all too close to our work in one way or another.

There are always plateaus in an artist's career where the inner editor is better at judging than than the inner artist at creating. This is natural, and is sometimes balanced by the reverse.

And right now? Your editor chops are getting heavy exercise.

---L.

I'm just telling you that she has a deep-seated wellspring of contempt for her own body of work that no amount of scourging can drive away. Maybe everyone does.

...to a degree, it's what makes you get better.

Oh, yes, one hopes, but there's being clear-eyed with oneself, which is extremely important, and then there's taking the pruning shears to a quince tree because you wanted an apple tree instead.

What is it you edit? I've just been finishing up the line edits on the antho for Drollerie, and I may soon be getting to where I can (a) start submitting to journals again, and (b) do some elective reading of my own.

Everyone is their own worst critic, except for those who are solipsists and/or narcissists. Your work is wonderful.

And I really enjoyed that poem of Robertson's.

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The weeping willow has taken to screaming

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Oh, Robin Robertson

First you should know I am not given to fanboyish hyperbole.

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brooms

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Re: First you should know I am not given to fanboyish hyperbole.

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Re: First you should know I am not given to fanboyish hyperbole.

Re: First you should know I am not given to fanboyish hyperbole.

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