March 8: From That Height, In Comparison, Ukraine

Santiago thinks about perspective . . . 

An airplane passed over head on its course to Miami and he watched its shadow scaring up the schools of flying fish.

"With so much flying fish there should be dolphin," he said, and leaned back on the line to see if it was possible to gain any on his fish. But he could not and it stayed at the hardness and water-drop shivering that preceded breaking. The boat moved ahead slowly and he watched the airplane until he could no longer see it.

It must be very strange in an airplane, he thought. I wonder what the sea looks like from that height? They should be able to see the fish well if they do not fly too high. I would like to fly very slowly at two hundred fathoms high and see the fish from above. In the turtle boats I was in the cross-trees of the mast-head and even at that height I saw much. The dolphin look greener from there and you can see their stripes and their purple spots and you can see all of the school as they swim. Why is it that all the fast-moving fish of the dark current have purple backs and usually purple stripes or spots? The dolphin looks green of course because he is really golden. But when he comes to feed, truly hungry, purple stripes show on his sides as on a marlin. Can it be anger, or the greater speed he makes that brings them out?

This little reflection by Santiago reminds me of that scene from Dead Poets Society when Robin Williams/Mr. Keating hops on top of his desk and talks about looking at the world in a different way.  That's what Santiago is doing here.  He's thinking about what his world looks like from the window of an airplane.  How much smaller and bigger it is all at once.

Tonight's post is going to be short.  I'm tired, and I have "miles to go before I sleep," as Robert Frost says.  This will be just a check-in, to say that I am alive and functioning.  Nothing huge and catastrophic happened today.  It was just . . . busy.

Of course, these days, nothing really seems huge and catastrophic in comparison to what's going on in Ukraine.  Vladimir Putin wreaking military Armageddon on a country and its people.  Last night, I heard about a young Ukrainian girl who was one her way home after delivering medical supplies to a veterinary clinic.  The girl encountered some Russian soldiers.  She was shot and killed in the street.  (A friend of mine, who currently lives and works in Ukraine, communicated this story.  The girl was a former student of my friend.)

This is what's going on in the world.  Innocent people being murdered.  Men, women, and children.  Sadly, this is nothing new on the face of the planet.  We've all heard/seen it before.  Nazi Germany.  Stalinist Russia.  Rwandan genocide.  Humans are very good at killing each other on massive scales.

Ukraine puts things into perspective.  My problems are tiny.  Insignificant.  Everybody I love is safe and healthy.  I don't have to worry whether a bomb is going to fall on top of my house.  Or that my daughter is going to be raped and slaughtered by soldiers on her way home from school.  I am incredibly blessed.

I could ask you all to pray for Ukraine right here.  That would be appropriate.  I believe in the power of prayer.  Yet, I know, by the time I type the last period on this post, more people will have been murdered in that country, and any prayer I utter will seem . . . not enough.  

I'm not sure how this all will end.  How history will judge us as we sit back and watch Ukrainians be massacred.  Many weeks ago, we knew this was going to happen.  Here we sit.  It's happening.  T. S. Eliot wrote, "This is the way the world ends / This is the way the world ends / This is the way the world ends / Not with a bang but a whimper."

Saint Marty is feeling a little like a hollow man tonight.  Whimpering these words.

Here's a way to bring a little light into the world of someone I care about.  Vote for my sister-in-law, Cindi Carlson, who is up for a very big prize:

Vote for Cindi Carlson

March 6: Hope, T. S. Eliot, "Ash Wednesday"

And a poem for this day. 

Saint Marty wishes all of his disciples hope this Lent.

Ash Wednesday

by:  T. S. Eliot

Because I do not hope to turn again
Because I do not hope
Because I do not hope to turn
Desiring this man’s gift and that man’s scope
I no longer strive to strive towards such things
(Why should the agèd eagle stretch its wings?)
Why should I mourn
The vanished power of the usual reign?

Because I do not hope to know
The infirm glory of the positive hour
Because I do not think
Because I know I shall not know
The one veritable transitory power
Because I cannot drink
There, where trees flower, and springs flow, for there is
nothing again

Because I know that time is always time
And place is always and only place
And what is actual is actual only for one time
And only for one place
I rejoice that things are as they are and
I renounce the blessèd face
And renounce the voice
Because I cannot hope to turn again
Consequently I rejoice, having to construct something
Upon which to rejoice

And pray to God to have mercy upon us

And pray that I may forget
These matters that with myself I too much discuss
Too much explain
Because I do not hope to turn again
Let these words answer
For what is done, not to be done again
May the judgement not be too heavy upon us

Because these wings are no longer wings to fly
But merely vans to beat the air
The air which is now thoroughly small and dry
Smaller and dryer than the will
Teach us to care and not to care Teach us to sit still.

Pray for us sinners now and at the hour of our death
Pray for us now and at the hour of our death.

II
Lady, three white leopards sat under a juniper-tree
In the cool of the day, having fed to sateity
On my legs my heart my liver and that which had been
contained
In the hollow round of my skull. And God said
Shall these bones live? shall these
Bones live? And that which had been contained
In the bones (which were already dry) said chirping:
Because of the goodness of this Lady
And because of her loveliness, and because
She honours the Virgin in meditation,
We shine with brightness. And I who am here dissembled
Proffer my deeds to oblivion, and my love
To the posterity of the desert and the fruit of the gourd.
It is this which recovers
My guts the strings of my eyes and the indigestible portions
Which the leopards reject. The Lady is withdrawn
In a white gown, to contemplation, in a white gown.
Let the whiteness of bones atone to forgetfulness.
There is no life in them. As I am forgotten
And would be forgotten, so I would forget
Thus devoted, concentrated in purpose. And God said
Prophesy to the wind, to the wind only for only
The wind will listen. And the bones sang chirping
With the burden of the grasshopper, saying

Lady of silences
Calm and distressed
Torn and most whole
Rose of memory
Rose of forgetfulness
Exhausted and life-giving
Worried reposeful
The single Rose
Is now the Garden
Where all loves end
Terminate torment
Of love unsatisfied
The greater torment
Of love satisfied
End of the endless
Journey to no end
Conclusion of all that
Is inconclusible
Speech without word and
Word of no speech
Grace to the Mother
For the Garden
Where all love ends.

Under a juniper-tree the bones sang, scattered and shining
We are glad to be scattered, we did little good to each
other,
Under a tree in the cool of day, with the blessing of sand,
Forgetting themselves and each other, united
In the quiet of the desert. This is the land which ye
Shall divide by lot. And neither division nor unity
Matters. This is the land. We have our inheritance.

III

At the first turning of the second stair
I turned and saw below
The same shape twisted on the banister
Under the vapour in the fetid air
Struggling with the devil of the stairs who wears
The deceitul face of hope and of despair.

At the second turning of the second stair
I left them twisting, turning below;
There were no more faces and the stair was dark,
Damp, jaggèd, like an old man’s mouth drivelling, beyond
repair,
Or the toothed gullet of an agèd shark.

At the first turning of the third stair
Was a slotted window bellied like the figs’s fruit
And beyond the hawthorn blossom and a pasture scene
The broadbacked figure drest in blue and green
Enchanted the maytime with an antique flute.
Blown hair is sweet, brown hair over the mouth blown,
Lilac and brown hair;
Distraction, music of the flute, stops and steps of the mind
over the third stair,
Fading, fading; strength beyond hope and despair
Climbing the third stair.

Lord, I am not worthy
Lord, I am not worthy

but speak the word only.

IV
Who walked between the violet and the violet
Who walked between
The various ranks of varied green
Going in white and blue, in Mary’s colour,
Talking of trivial things
In ignorance and knowledge of eternal dolour
Who moved among the others as they walked,
Who then made strong the fountains and made fresh the springs

Made cool the dry rock and made firm the sand
In blue of larkspur, blue of Mary’s colour,
Sovegna vos

Here are the years that walk between, bearing
Away the fiddles and the flutes, restoring
One who moves in the time between sleep and waking, wearing

White light folded, sheathing about her, folded.
The new years walk, restoring
Through a bright cloud of tears, the years, restoring
With a new verse the ancient rhyme. Redeem
The time. Redeem
The unread vision in the higher dream
While jewelled unicorns draw by the gilded hearse.

The silent sister veiled in white and blue
Between the yews, behind the garden god,
Whose flute is breathless, bent her head and signed but spoke
no word

But the fountain sprang up and the bird sang down
Redeem the time, redeem the dream
The token of the word unheard, unspoken

Till the wind shake a thousand whispers from the yew

And after this our exile

V
If the lost word is lost, if the spent word is spent
If the unheard, unspoken
Word is unspoken, unheard;
Still is the unspoken word, the Word unheard,
The Word without a word, the Word within
The world and for the world;
And the light shone in darkness and
Against the Word the unstilled world still whirled
About the centre of the silent Word.

O my people, what have I done unto thee.

Where shall the word be found, where will the word
Resound? Not here, there is not enough silence
Not on the sea or on the islands, not
On the mainland, in the desert or the rain land,
For those who walk in darkness
Both in the day time and in the night time
The right time and the right place are not here
No place of grace for those who avoid the face
No time to rejoice for those who walk among noise and deny
the voice

Will the veiled sister pray for
Those who walk in darkness, who chose thee and oppose thee,
Those who are torn on the horn between season and season,
time and time, between
Hour and hour, word and word, power and power, those who wait
In darkness? Will the veiled sister pray
For children at the gate
Who will not go away and cannot pray:
Pray for those who chose and oppose

O my people, what have I done unto thee.

Will the veiled sister between the slender
Yew trees pray for those who offend her
And are terrified and cannot surrender
And affirm before the world and deny between the rocks
In the last desert before the last blue rocks
The desert in the garden the garden in the desert
Of drouth, spitting from the mouth the withered apple-seed.

O my people.

VI
Although I do not hope to turn again
Although I do not hope
Although I do not hope to turn

Wavering between the profit and the loss
In this brief transit where the dreams cross
The dreamcrossed twilight between birth and dying
(Bless me father) though I do not wish to wish these things
From the wide window towards the granite shore
The white sails still fly seaward, seaward flying
Unbroken wings

And the lost heart stiffens and rejoices
In the lost lilac and the lost sea voices
And the weak spirit quickens to rebel
For the bent golden-rod and the lost sea smell
Quickens to recover
The cry of quail and the whirling plover
And the blind eye creates
The empty forms between the ivory gates
And smell renews the salt savour of the sandy earth

This is the time of tension between dying and birth
The place of solitude where three dreams cross
Between blue rocks
But when the voices shaken from the yew-tree drift away
Let the other yew be shaken and reply.

Blessèd sister, holy mother, spirit of the fountain, spirit
of the garden,
Suffer us not to mock ourselves with falsehood
Teach us to care and not to care
Teach us to sit still
Even among these rocks,
Our peace in His will
And even among these rocks
Sister, mother
And spirit of the river, spirit of the sea,
Suffer me not to be separated

And let my cry come unto Thee.

June 12: Golden-Haired Circassian, Labels, Space Cowboy

With reference to the whaling scene shortly to be described, as well as for the better understanding of all similar scenes elsewhere presented, I have here to speak of the magical, sometimes horrible whale-line.

The line originally used in the fishery was of the best hemp, slightly vapored with tar, not impregnated with it, as in the case of ordinary ropes; for while tar, as ordinarily used, makes the hemp more pliable to the rope-maker, and also renders the rope itself more convenient to the sailor for common ship use; yet, not only would the ordinary quantity too much stiffen the whale-line for the close coiling to which it must be subjected; but as most seamen are beginning to learn, tar in general by no means adds to the rope's durability or strength, however much it may give it compactness and gloss.

Of late years the Manilla rope has in the American fishery almost entirely superseded hemp as a material for whale-lines; for, though not so durable as hemp, it is stronger, and far more soft and elastic; and I will add (since there is an aesthetics in all things), is much more handsome and becoming to the boat, than hemp. Hemp is a dusky, dark fellow, a sort of Indian; but Manilla is as a golden-haired Circassian to behold.

The whale-line is only two thirds of an inch in thickness. At first sight, you would not think it so strong as it really is. By experiment its one and fifty yarns will each suspend a weight of one hundred and twenty pounds; so that the whole rope will bear a strain nearly equal to three tons. In length, the common sperm whale-line measures something over two hundred fathoms. Towards the stern of the boat it is spirally coiled away in the tub, not like the worm-pipe of a still though, but so as to form one round, cheese-shaped mass of densely bedded "sheaves," or layers of concentric spiralizations, without any hollow but the "heart," or minute vertical tube formed at the axis of the cheese. As the least tangle or kink in the coiling would, in running out, infallibly take somebody's arm, leg, or entire body off, the utmost precaution is used in stowing the line in its tub. Some harpooneers will consume almost an entire morning in this business, carrying the line high aloft and then reeving it downwards through a block towards the tub, so as in the act of coiling to free it from all possible wrinkles and twists.

In the English boats two tubs are used instead of one; the same line being continuously coiled in both tubs. There is some advantage in this; because these twin-tubs being so small they fit more readily into the boat, and do not strain it so much; whereas, the American tub, nearly three feet in diameter and of proportionate depth, makes a rather bulky freight for a craft whose planks are but one-half inch in thickness; for the bottom of the whale-boat is like critical ice, which will bear up a considerable distributed weight, but not very much of a concentrated one. When the painted canvas cover is clapped on the American tubline, the boat looks as if it were pulling off with a prodigious great wedding-cake to present to the whales.

Both ends of the line are exposed; the lower end terminating in an eye-splice or loop coming up from the bottom against the side of the tub, and hanging over its edge completely disengaged from everything. This arrangement of the lower end is necessary on two accounts. First: In order to facilitate the fastening to it of an additional line from a neighboring boat, in case the stricken whale should sound so deep as to threaten to carry off the entire line originally attached to the harpoon. In these instances, the whale of course is shifted like a mug of ale, as it were, from the one boat to the other; though the first boat always hovers at hand to assist its consort. Second: This arrangement is indispensable for common safety's sake; for were the lower end of the line in any way attached to the boat, and were the whale then to run the line out to the end almost in a single, smoking minute as he sometimes does, he would not stop there, for the doomed boat would infallibly be dragged down after him into the profundity of the sea; and in that case no town-crier would ever find her again.

Before lowering the boat for the chase, the upper end of the line is taken aft from the tub, and passing round the loggerhead there, is again carried forward the entire length of the boat, resting crosswise upon the loom or handle of every man's oar, so that it jogs against his wrist in rowing; and also passing between the men, as they alternately sit at the opposite gunwales, to the leaded chocks or grooves in the extreme pointed prow of the boat, where a wooden pin or skewer the size of a common squill, prevents it from slipping out. From the chocks it hangs in a slight festoon over the bows, and is then passed inside the boat again; and some ten or twenty fathoms (called box-line) being coiled upon the box in the bows, it continues its way to the gunwale still a little further aft, and is then attached to the short-warp- the rope which is immediately connected with the harpoon; but previous to that connexion, the short-warp goes through sundry mystifications too tedious to detail.

Thus the whale-line folds the whole boat in its complicated coils, twisting and writhing around it in almost every direction. All the oarsmen are involved in its perilous contortions; so that to the timid eye of the landsman, they seem as Indian jugglers, with the deadliest snakes sportively festooning their limbs. Nor can any son of mortal woman, for the first time, seat himself amid those hempen intricacies, and while straining his utmost at the oar, bethink him that at any unknown instant the harpoon may be darted, and all these horrible contortions be put in play like ringed lightnings; he cannot be thus circumstanced without a shudder that makes the very marrow in his bones to quiver in him like a shaken jelly. Yet habit- strange thing! what cannot habit accomplish?- Gayer sallies, more merry mirth, better jokes, and brighter repartees, you never heard over your mahogany, than you will hear over the half-inch white cedar of the whaleboat, when thus hung in hangman's nooses; and, like the six burghers of Calais before King Edward, the six men composing the crew pull into the jaws of death, with a halter around every neck, as you may say.

Perhaps a very little thought will now enable you to account for those repeated whaling disasters- some few of which are casually chronicled- of this man or that man being taken out of the boat by the line, and lost. For, when the line is darting out, to be seated then in the boat, is like being seated in the midst of the manifold whizzings of a steam-engine in full play, when every flying beam, and shaft, and wheel, is grazing you. It is worse; for you cannot sit motionless in the heart of these perils, because the boat is rocking like a cradle, and you are pitched one way and the other, without the slightest warning; and only by a certain self-adjusting buoyancy and simultaneousness of volition and action, can you escape being made a Mazeppa of, and run away with where the all-seeing sun himself could never pierce you out.

Again: as the profound calm which only apparently precedes and prophesies of the storm, is perhaps more awful than the storm itself; for, indeed, the calm is but the wrapper and envelope of the storm; and contains it in itself, as the seemingly harmless rifle holds the fatal powder, and the ball, and the explosion; so the graceful repose of the line, as it silently serpentines about the oarsmen before being brought into actual play- this is a thing which carries more of true terror than any other aspect of this dangerous affair. But why say more? All men live enveloped in whale-lines. All are born with halters round their necks; but it is only when caught in the swift, sudden turn of death, that mortals realize the silent, subtle, everpresent perils of life. And if you be a philosopher, though seated in the whale-boat, you would not at heart feel one whit more of terror, than though seated before your evening fire with a poker, and not a harpoon, by your side.

Melville pulls a Melville here--an entire chapter on rope.  Not an exciting subject for most people, I know.  Of course, there's talk of whales and drowning and death, as well, although he ends with a fairly positive image--getting cozy in front of an evening fire with a poker and beer.  Okay, I threw the beer in there, but you get the idea.  Melville doesn't want to end this passage tied to a whale at the bottom of the ocean.

I find the digressions in Moby-Dick more interesting than Melville's actual narrative.  They have a weird lyricism that appeals to me.  There's beauty in the writing, even if it's comparing Manilla versus hemp whale-line.  As I've said before, Herman was a man ahead of his literary time--a postmodern writer before there were modern writers.

I sometimes think about where I fall in the literary spectrum.  Certainly, many of my poems have strong narrative content.  I like telling stories.  However, I also tend toward the lyrical, as well, with strong concentration on image.  So what does that make me?  A Romantic?  Imagist?  Robert Frost with a smattering of William Blake thrown in?  I'm not sure.  I've never been much for labels.

I think that's the reason why Moby-Dick wasn't recognized as great literature when it was first published.  It isn't an easy book to label.  It's not a sea adventure.  It's not a scientific study of whales.  Or an exposé  on whaling.  Or a lyric poem.  Or a sea monster tale.  Yet, it's all of these things, depending on the page or paragraph.  I'm not sure nineteenth-century readers were all that keen on experimental literature.

I don't think I'm an experimental writer.  However, I don't think that my writing is necessarily easy, either.  My poems tend to be on the dense side--packed with lots of image and allusion.  My sister said to me the other day, "I need an encyclopedia and a dictionary to read your stuff."  Certainly, I'm not T. S. Eliot.  I don't include quotes in Greek or Latin or French in my work without translation.  I'm not above making a reader work a little bit, but I don't believe in frustrating a reader to the point of tears, either.

I guess I never really think about what "kind" of poem I write.  The poem usually chooses its own form.  Recently, I'm been writing short prose poems.  The last two poems I've written have line breaks and are a little less narrative.  Maybe I'm thinking about it all wrong.  I shouldn't worry about how to label or categorize myself and my work.  I should just worry about writing and let my literary biographer (I am accepting applications at the moment) sort out the mess.

Maybe I'm a poet.  Maybe I'm a lyric essayist.  Or maybe, just maybe, I'm a space cowboy from the planet Xenon Kerouac.

Saint Marty is thankful tonight for new writing, whatever form it takes.

January 6: Epiphanies, T. S. Eliot, "The Journey of the Magi"

This weekend marks the Feast of the Epiphany.  The official end of the Christmas celebration in Christian churches.

Of course, I could wax philosophic about quests and seeking wisdom and enlightenment.  I could also speak about other quests--the quest for the winning Powerball ticket tonight, the quest for true love or happiness, the quest for health or thinness.  It all sort of mixes up in my mind.

Traditionally, an epiphany is the attainment of some kind of knowledge that you don't already possess.  That's the symbolism of the journey of the Magi, isn't it?  A journey toward something wondrous and life-changing.  Whether that something is material, intellectual, or spiritual depends upon the person.

Tonight, when I play the pipe organ for Mass, I will be thinking about what my epiphany will be this year.  Perhaps I will learn that money can't buy happiness (I sort of already know that).  Or that the greatest treasures in my life is the warm body of my wife, the laughter of my son, the trust of my daughter.  Or that life is short and sometimes difficult and, ultimately, all about love.

Saint Marty is open to any and all epiphanies today.

The Journey of the Magi

by:  T. S. Eliot

A cold coming we had of it,
Just the worst time of the year
For a journey, and such a long journey:
The ways deep and the weather sharp,
The very dead of winter.
And the camels galled, sorefooted, refractory,
Lying down in the melting snow.
There were times we regretted
The summer palaces on slopes, the terraces,
And the silken girls bringing sherbet.
Then the camel men cursing and grumbling
and running away, and wanting their liquor and women,
And the night-fires going out, and the lack of shelters,
And the cities hostile and the towns unfriendly
And the villages dirty and charging high prices:
A hard time we had of it.
At the end we preferred to travel all night,
Sleeping in snatches,
With the voices singing in our ears, saying
That this was all folly.

Then at dawn we came down to a temperate valley,
Wet, below the snow line, smelling of vegetation;
With a running stream and a water-mill beating the darkness,
And three trees on the low sky,
And an old white horse galloped away in the meadow.
Then we came to a tavern with vine-leaves over the lintel,
Six hands at an open door dicing for pieces of silver,
And feet kicking the empty wine-skins.
But there was no information, and so we continued
And arriving at evening, not a moment too soon
Finding the place; it was (you might say) satisfactory.

All this was a long time ago, I remember,
And I would do it again, but set down
This set down
This: were we led all that way for
Birth or Death? There was a Birth, certainly
We had evidence and no doubt. I had seen birth and death,
But had thought they were different; this Birth was
Hard and bitter agony for us, like Death, our death.
We returned to our places, these Kingdoms,
But no longer at ease here, in the old dispensation,
With an alien people clutching their gods.
I should be glad of another death.

February 23: David Copperfield Crap, The Paris Review Interviews Vol. 1, New Cartoon

If you really want to hear about it, the first thing you'll probably want to know is where I was born, and what my lousy childhood was like, and how my parents were occupied and all before they had me, and all that David Copperfield kind of crap, but I don't feel like going into it, if you want to know the truth.

 That's how Salinger opens The Catcher in the Rye.  It's one of the most famous quotes from the book.  It touches on Charles Dickens and his largely autobiographical novel, David Copperfield.  Dickens never wrote an autobiography.  The closest he ever came was Copperfield, which contains several details from Dickens' youth.  Of course, Holden isn't interested in all the trappings of autobiography--the requisite navel gazing.  And, of course, the next 200-plus pages of Catcher is an exercise in just that, on a Holden Caulfield level.

For my birthday last year, I received a box-set of The Paris Review Interviews, Vol. 1-3.  Basically, these three volumes include a selection of interviews with some of the most famous writers of the twentieth century.  In the introduction to the first volume, Philip Gourevitch writes about the process of a Paris Review interview, which strays a great deal from the normal journalistic approach.  There is no attempt to surprise of "catch" the interviewee.   It is a collaborative process, conducted over several seasons, sometimes years.  The writer being interviewed is given several attempts to edit and revise his/her statements in the interview.  The results are illuminating portraits of the writer's thoughts about the life and the craft of fiction, poetry, theater, biography, essay, whatever.

The first volume of the series contains interviews with the likes of Dorothy Parker, Truman Capote, Ernest Hemingway, Kurt Vonnegut, and Joan Didion.  Rather than try to capture the essence of the interviews in this little post, I'm simply going to give you a smattering of some of the pearls of wisdom and truth displayed by the interview subjects:

I suppose my superstitiousness could be termed a quirk.  I have to add up all numbers:  there are some people I never telephone because their number adds up to an unlucky figure.  Or I won't accept a hotel room for the same reason.  I will not tolerate the presence of yellow roses--which is sad because they're my favorite flower.  I can't allow three cigarette butts in the same ashtray.  Won't travel on a plane with two nuns.  Won't begin or end anything on a Friday.  It's endless, the things I can't and won't.  But I derive some curious comfort from obeying these primitive concepts.
     --Truman Capote

When I am working on a book or a story I write every morning as soon after first light as possible.  There is no one to disturb you and it is cool or cold and you come to your work and warm as you write.  You read what you have written and, as you always stop when you know what is going to happen next, you go on from there.  You write until you come to a place where you still have your juice and know what will happen next and you stop and try to live through until the next day when you hit it again.  You have started at six in the morning, say, and may go on until noon or be through before that.  When you stop you are as empty, and at the same time never empty but filling, as when you have made love to someone you love.  Nothing can hurt you, nothing can happen, nothing means anything until the next day when you do it again.  It is the wait until the next day that is hard to get through.
     --Ernest Hemingway

I think it's awfully dangerous to give general advice.  I think the best one can do for a young poet is to criticize in detail a particular poem of his.  Argue it with him if necessary; give him your opinion, and if there are any generalizations to be made, let him do them himself.  I've found that different people have different ways of working and things come to them in different ways.  You're never sure when you're uttering a statement that's generally valid for all poets or when it's something that only applies to yourself.  I think nothing is worse than to try to form people in your own image.
     --T. S. Eliot

It was stated by Paul Engle--the founder of the Writers' Workshop at Iowa.  He told me that, if the workshop ever got a building of its own, these words should be inscribed over the entrance:  Don't take it all so seriously.
     --Kurt Vonnegut

Although a novel takes place in the larger world there's always some drive in it that is entirely personal--even if you don't know it while you're doing it.  I realized some years after A Book of Common Prayer was finished that it was about my anticipating Quintana's growing up.  It wrote it around 1975, so she would have been nine, but I was already anticipating separation and actually working through that ahead of time.  So novels are also about things you're afraid you can't deal with.
     -Joan Didion

Just last week a friend and I went to visit a wonderful lady I know in Quebec.  She's seventy-four or seventy-five.  And she didn't say this to me but she said to my friend, Alice, I'd like to ask my neighbor who has the big house next door to dinner, and she's so nice, but she'd be bound to ask Elizabeth what she does and if Elizabeth said she wrote poetry, the poor woman wouldn't say another word all evening!  This is awful, you know, and I think no matter how modest you think you feel or how minor you think you are, there must be an awful core of ego somewhere for you to set yourself up to write poetry.  I've never felt it, but it must be there.
     --Elizabeth Bishop

This is the end of this blog post.
     --Saint Marty

Confessions of Saint Marty