[New-Poetry] Re: unprolificks and prolificks

[David Graham]

Yes, lots of different issues are getting thrown into the mix here.   
I was mostly interested in what daily practice can do for a poet,  
what doors it may or may not open, but other matters do get swept  
together pretty quickly.

For instance, yes, it's good to remember that rate of production  
isn't the same thing as rate of publishing, though obviously someone  
like Lifshin couldn't publish so much if she didn't first write it.   
I wonder if she ever writes anything she doesn't at least seek to  
print.  Some writers present the public with the tip of the iceberg,  
but I suspect Lifshin's all iceberg.

As pathologies go, hers seems fairly benign under the aspect of  
eternity, and probably no more neurotic than that of the obsessive  
perfectionist never letting a poem go.

Another issue is how much crafting/revision takes place after  
something is drafted.  Which I do think is a separate matter from the  
prolific/restrained polarity, but it's easy to see why they get  
conflated.  There are many poets who clearly write a lot without much  
apparent revision (Bukowski, O'Hara), and even some (Ginsberg) who  
are oddly proud of that fact.

Not sure there are tons who write sparingly, then also don't revise,  
but apparently Billy Collins would be one example. He claims not to  
revise much, just getting poems down in one fell swoop.  Yet he's not  
a Lifshin in terms of rate of publication or, evidently, rate of  
production.

I don't know for sure, but I'd be shocked if Lifshin revises much.   
Someone mentioned that David Lehman's journal poems didn't look too  
worked-over, and I'd agree.  Love it or hate it, that's part of his  
intention; he's attempting an update of O'Hara's "I do this I do  
that" poems.

It may be an entirely subjective quality, but I do think there may be  
a certain fluency of style that comes as much from prolific practice  
as it does from endless revision.  It's all very good to talk about  
the art that conceals its artfulness and all that, but to my ears  
Yeats's poems sound quite different from someone like O'Hara's.   
There's a chiseled-in-rock quality to Yeats that can be very great,  
clearly, but there's an Ariel-like quality to the best O'Hara that  
can also be great.

I sometimes tell poetry workshop classes that I am highly suspicious  
of final portfolios that have not been revised, but that there are  
two broad ways to revise:  write and rewrite a single poem 10 times,  
or write 10 poems & select the best one.  Seems to me that both are  
equally valid methods of revision. And obviously many gradations &  
variations between the extremes.


========================================
David Graham
grahamd at ripon.edu

Home Page:
http://web.mac.com/drjazz/iWeb/Site/About%20Me.html

Poetry Library:
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==========================================



On Nov 1, 2007, at 9:57 AM, Alexander Dickow wrote:

> For a long time, bodies of work like those of
> Mallarme, Hopkins and Roethke were a bit of an
> inspiration for me, since they demonstrated that it
> didn't take a large oeuvre to make an impact. I think
> it's interesting, though, and slightly odd, how this
> discussion tends to talk around issues of style
> through the prism of rates of production. Comparing
> Roethke to Dylan Thomas, for instance, or Ginsberg to
> whoever. I'm not sure, for my part, that
> numbers-of-poems-written has any necessary connection
> to density of style or craft (as someone obliquely
> affirmed when they stated something like, "craft and
> speed of execution aren't mutually exclusive").
> Mallarme, Hopkins and others would seem to suggest a
> correlation, but who would the counter-examples be?
> It would seem at least that a distinction should be
> made between qualities of style and writing processes,
> for the sake of intellectual rigor, even if such a
> distinction may seem to break down.
> Not to say I'm not interested in how process relates
> to product. I'm of the "poems get written in part
> before they get written down" camp, especially because
> I have a frustratingly chronic tendancy to have my
> best lines and ideas come to me as I'm trying to fall
> asleep: which requires that I noisily rummage in my
> nightstand for a penlight, pen and paper before the
> tasty morsel slips away forever -- to my wife's
> dismay....
> Back to studying my latin, foax. Don't think I added
> much to the discussion, but it was fun piping up....
> Amicalement,
> Alex
>
>
> www.alexdickow.net/blog/
>
>   les mots! ah quel désert à la fin
>   merveilleux. -- Henri Droguet
>
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