We got to the lake yesterday. My sister and her husband left this morning, so we’re here alone, taking a breath. We have to bring everything except the furniture for a two months’ move. Blessedly, I just had cortisone shots in my back, so I managed the lifting pretty well. And swam last night with my sister. It’s such a relief to have less pain. Back pain makes you depressed.
I’m writing so little at the moment! Waiting to hear about my Diary project and sending out my new poetry collection, so I’m in limbo. I’ve often thought—may not be true for others—that there’s a component of needing to write that figures in. Too much work backed up and the need drops. When I lived in Arkansas, young and out of touch with other writers, I felt my poems were needed in that world. It all felt new—an open space crying for exploration.
Two things figure in now. I’m in touch with the writing world so that I see and read new work all the time. There’s so much of it! It goes on and on: journals, magazines, books, my inbox. There’s barely any space left. The wilderness has been filled with subdivisions. That’s only a feeling. Of course every poem, every book, is a whole new venture.
So maybe (reason no. 2) I personally have so many poems, so many books of my own that sometimes it feels that my work is finished. I’ll be 79 in two days. What new direction is there? Still, I have the need to say something. This Wobbly, for instance. It always seems there can be more, always a new angle, a new take on being alive.
The need to Say Something remains, how long? James Wright was arranging his final collection on his deathbed. Marie Ponset’s final poetry collection was published when she was 96, two years before she died.
My motivation has changed. I don’t have any. Motivation, that is. I am like a train car, the engine so far ahead and around the bend I can’t see it anymore. But I keep on being pulled, through successes and failures.
Essay by Stephen Marche in the NYT: He’s talking with Nathan Englander. “’Is it ever easier?’ I asked him one night. ‘Do you ever grow a thicker skin?’ Englander had no answer, so he told me a story. He had once been at dinner with Philip Roth. ‘Is it ever easier’” he asked Roth. ‘My skin will get thicker with each book, right?’ Roth didn’t need a story. He had an answer. ‘It’ll get thinner and thinner until they can hold you up to the light and see through,’ Roth said.”
No matter what age, it’s mostly defeat. Here’s another quote from the same essay:
“The public sees writers mainly in their victories but their lives are spent mostly in defeat. I suppose that’s why, in the rare moments of triumph, writers always look a little out of place — posing in magazine profiles in their half-considered outfits with their last-minute hair; desperately re-upping their most positive reviews on Instagram; or, at the ceremonies for writing prizes — the Oscars for lumpy people — grinning like recently released prisoners readjusting to society.”
I think the difference in me now is that I understand this. I’m writing better than ever, but the tide of young writers is washing over the land. Good for them, I say. I go on, writing the best I can. Always sinking into the slough of despond, climbing out by my fingernails, having a few moments of personal triumph when the words land right.
When whatever acclaim you’ve managed to garner grows thin, when the applause fades, when a book’s turned down over and over, when your publisher doesn’t want you any more, (This will likely all happen to you), you ask yourself why you’re doing this. There’s no answer except that it’s what you do. It’s noble work.