old nymph takes the cure

In the dirt made of words. This extensive root system

Pings my ferocities into Effort. Mint goes wherever

Mint wants or needs to go. Was it Happening always.

Ever since the lack of a steel ring. Steering itself.

The runners came to Cameras subtle & bitter. Castles.

Available as flinty rock. Go on. Keep trying. Say it's

My turn. My turn useful. My turn inept. Explanation.

Comments

[ms]

i would like to express in response to this and it reminded me, but i feel unable, too lacking in words for some reason ... illiteracy of another sort

[brtom]

Expressing can take any form ... doesn't have to be in words ... Make a mark on a page or on a wall. Make a motion ... a shape. Or words.

When I respond with a poem, say, to another poem or prose passage or expereince, I start with some detail of the original thing and move off ... very quickly most of the time ... into other territory, which is unknown until I get there.

So, just do something ... anything ... and see what comes of it. But I wouldn't waste much time thinking about my inabilities. After I make it I may not be happy with it, but at least I've given me some permission to act, to make, & follow that impulse to "create." I'd encourage you to work away from that self-stopping thought & just GO. There's everything (or something) to be discovered ... and nothing to lose.

[ms]

just out of curiosity, do you follow your own advice? It sounds good, or right -- yet so often you express such doubt for one who writes so well...I was just wondering

[brtom]

I think that most of the time I do follow this particular advice ... in this case, of just doing something & not paralyzing myself ... in the matter of these poems, I just need to be on the computer ... I make 'em fast, fiddle with them a bit (or a lot) & post 'em ...

I reserve the right to doubt the value of anything I write, but I've at least gotten over the hump that would keep me from writing in the first place. My recent doubts swirl around the possibility that these things I'm doing are just kid-stuff ... that what looks like an obscurantist approach is just ... some kind of late adolescent aesthetic.

But then, I'm not sure what an "adult" aesthetic would look like with this kind of poem.

[ms]

i would like to get back to the kid stuff. but to be honest, i just didn't express any comment bc i thought what i thought/felt was old, tired and stupid, irrelevant .. probably most comments anyone makes about what anyone else has to say or write are irrelevant to one who got over that hump and just writes, so irrelevant is likely not the right word. i felt in response to those two and whatever that was desiring expression was at the same time declining. does that make any sense?

[brtom]

Believe me, it wouldn't have been "old, tired and stupid" to me ... especially not if you were saying something even vaguely positive about the poem ... or something weirdly creative in response to it ... since I can be a regular compliment whore. I'll take old, tired and stupid any day.

[ms]

i don;t know what passes for "positive'...the old nymph and it reminded me spoke to me somehow, even if i didn't hear what was said; there is a stirring been going on pretty much since europe -- 'cept for the times i can hush it or close my ears, and not even sure the reason or need to silence whatever it is...but stirring it is, all tangled up with ideas of religion -- the honest real kind (at least as compared to here) i saw in eastern europe vs the community I feel shut out from but really desire, if not through church then somewhere; desolation, isolation and contemplation; forgiveness and sin, and the idea of sin and all that entails (though I'm thinking my sense of these things is distorted); the moral compass or, what is more likley, my lack of one...there's a fomenting and its not bad, just can't get a grasp and though i'm writing a lot it all escapes me. Yet these 2 -- old nymphs and reminding me -- somehow spoke to all that. If i took to the keyboard, or pen and paper, i might put it differently, have a question...then i would want to ask that question but i know i am the only one who can answer though i believe generally my answers are a foisting off as often as not. I know you are really busy with end of school, end of a life you've been doing a while and off on a new tangent...to be honest, as i often am not, on the on hand i would write email or real mail, and on the other i feel i have no right to valuable time, esp when i have nothing to say as my brain is bursting with ... incoherence?