I was reading about teaching poetry over at Ron Silliman's BLOG, and a lot was talked about the process of writing and how changing, even slightly, certain things about your process could greatly affect the product produced. Something was mentioned about Robert Creeley saying that changing the means of producing your work can help relieve writer's block (if you write mainly from a computer, switch to a notebook.)
I almost exclusively write poems sitting at a computer--either at my office (my state poetry grant, as I like to call it at times) or cramped at my desk in the corner of my room, typing away poems on my laptop. Recently, however, I bought two (they came in a pair) moleskin pocket size notebooks to carry with me. I don't know if I did this because I actually wanted to try to write "en route," or rather, felt obligated as a writer to carry a notebook and pen around with me. Regardless, I now carry around a notebook. As of this morning, I have written on three pages. Two of those pages are a drunken poem I wrote at Duffy's one night sitting at the end of the bar (god, could have i been any more obvious?) that nothing will ever come of. The other page is a short poem that I could, eventually, do something with.
I think the computer itself has become some sort of reference, in and of itself, for my writing. It's the means of production and a lot of my writing, at least lately, calls attention to that process of production. I'm unfamiliar with creativity through a blank piece of paper. I realize that they are the SAME words, but the computer doesn't make them so permanent (although thinking about it, that kind of seems backwards.) On a computer my words are clean and legible; I can minimize the window to make them go away! Whereas on a piece of paper, they are usually messy and never stop staring up at me. There is a certain level of anxiety that goes along with writing, not to mention carrying the words around with you that you often times so desperately want to get away from. I think I am simply choosing the easy way out, the lesser anxious feeling. I do not want to continue this. I need to see what comes out of THAT anxiety.
Tonight, I'm going to read William Blake and try to figure out why my eyes hurt when I move them.
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Because it broods under it's hood like a perched falcon
Because it jumps like a skittish horse
and sometimes throws me
Because it is pokey when cold
Because plastic is a sad, strong material
that is charming to rodents
Because it is flighty
Because my mind flies into it through my fingers
Because it leaps forward and backward
is an endless sniffer and searcher,
Because its keys click like hail on a rock
& it winks when it goes out,
& puts word-heaps in hoards for me, dozens of pockets of
gold under boulders in streambeds, identical seedpods
strong on a vine, or it stores bins of bolts;
And I lose them and find them,
Because whole worlds of writing can be boldly layed out
and then highlighted, & vanished in a flash at
"delete" so it teaches
of impermanence and pain;
& because my computer and me are both brief
in this world, both foolish, and we have earthly fates,
Because I have let it move in with me
right inside the tent
And it goes with me out every morning
We fill up our baskets, get back home,
Feel rich, relax, I throw it a scrap and it hums.
I experienced the exact same sensation you described in the last paragraph when playing with the old typewriter I got for xmas (the sudden and seemingly "unnatural" physical presence of the words).
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