Friday, February 22, 2013

Poets to Poets

I'm moved to share this rediscovered anecdote, quoted in Joan Frank's Because You Have To: A Writing Life. The person referred to is Donald Shuhan (I think I've spelled that correctly).

At every poetry conference [Donald] taught, he commanded his fifty or so participants: 

You are here at this conference to make—not just your own art—but the art of at least one other person here better and fuller and richer. You are here to fall so much in love with another person's poems that you would give all your art over to them—freely, deeply, unhesitatingly—so that these poems, and their poet, can become more beautifully and movingly true.


Irrespective of whether this can possibly be true every time, a heart-expanding inclination, no?

N.

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3 comments:

  1. UnknownFebruary 22, 2013 at 10:58 AM

    thanks for sharing this.

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  2. Margot PFebruary 22, 2013 at 12:35 PM

    I love the opening-- "you are here at this conference to make--not just your own art--" mysterious! And satisfying. Thanks, Nicole.

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  3. Carolyn ForchéFebruary 23, 2013 at 4:13 AM

    this is a beautiful expression of what it means to write in solitude and community at once (as we are now)...

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