What’s been keeping me so busy? Writing Center and running my workshops, which have started to gain attendance. It’s funny—some days I feel really exhausted by the very idea of tutoring, but the moment my students arrive I’m right there in the work. I wish I could remember this ahead of time. I feel like I’m a grump. I guess it’s partly being so protective of my own time, which is divided between so many things. I’m tutoring at Duke Ellington, a performing arts high school a few blocks from Georgetown, two days a week—though there have been weeks when I’ve only made it to one of my days. (This week for instance: I really needed the whole of Tuesday to get things done…) But students are starting to come in, and I love talking to these students about writing—it’s really getting into fundamentals, and instilling ideas about writing as a process at the outset. It also gives me a chance to talk to them about the contexts for writing, so they know that there are different conventions for different types of writing, and they can use those conventions, and play with them, as long as they’re aware of them. I’ve also been working intensively with one particular student, and spent an hour going through a single paper he had already handed in, looking at where the writing was really strong, and where he could take it further. Every time I look at these pieces of writing at this level I feel like I’m learning about my own writing. When I grade papers, I limit myself to the amount of time I spend on individual papers, and don’t comment on every possible aspect, but instead what I think are the next steps the particular writer can master to improve, so writing improves incrementally. Perhaps that’s ingrained from my flute-playing days: I’ve read bits and pieces of gaining expertise in writing, with comparisons to the type of training a musician undergoes, and I know that it’s counterproductive to try and work on everything at once.
Of course, I don’t get around to implementing every suggestion I make to students in my own (critical) writing. But slowly comes to matter less—each paper I write there’s something that is becoming more ingrained, and my conscious attention can shift to a different factor. It generally takes 10 years—or longer—to gain mastery. (This is, in fact, a problem for wind players and singers. To reach maturity as a musician, you really do need that ten years. String players and pianists start at a very early age, but you can’t really start serious lessons on wind instruments until later, because they are physically demanding in different ways—the breath required. Wind players will often graduate from a music degree only just beginning to reach a level of expertise—or still not quite there—while string players are at a different level. This interests me a lot.) Oh, the point? I feel like I’ve really been focusing on what it takes to write a critical paper for no longer than 5 years—and I’m not sure I’ve been focussing truly for that long. I mean, I know I started at university over ten years ago (oh—realising that is… huge) but I was at sea when I started, and the feedback I got didn’t really help me figure out how to improve. I figured some things out for myself—but at the same time I’ve been reformulating my writing since I’ve been in America.
So, tutoring has been keeping me busy. Thinking about writing has been keeping me busy. Wordsworth and Coleridge have been keeping me busy—sadly it’s started to turn cold, and, today, wet, which means soon I’ll be giving up my canal-side position. I wonder where my new reading spot will be?
I feel like my thesis has been a little on the backburner in the past fortnight. I managed to sit down on Thursday morning—there were no clients in the writing center—and get some writing done towards my thesis. I want to finish the analysis of the poem I’m looking at soon—today? I can dream… maybe it will become a reality. I also have a paper to write for Monday: I have to choose three lines of a poem and write an analysis of them, between 600 and 1000 words. And that will happen today. Writing about poems takes time, but it is also joyful. I feel like reading Helen Vendler’s book Poets Thinking has helped me think about a particular way to write on poems. I learned a few things about writing from her. Good stuff!
I’ve also started to be a research/general assistant with the other hours I’m allowed to be employed by Georgetown University. This has been great—at present I’m organising a research library. It’s actually a really good workout—running up and down a stepladder with piles of books, especially when I have to reach up to the top shelf. The day after my first shelving marathon my lats were sore… it was so nice! And a good excuse to settle into a lavender flavoured bath with a copy of Vogue.
As if all that weren’t enough, there’ve been poets in town. Ilya Kaminsky came to Carolyn’s class on Wednesday, and I got to chat with him before and after class. Marvellous! He is a joyful poet, and a joyful presence. He gave me some recommendations—I love getting recommendations!—and quizzed me on who to read from Australia. (I threw in a few New Zealanders for good measure…)
And then! And then! Thursday night Adam Zagajewski read at Georgetown. Now, some people may remember the day, several years ago, that I pulled Tremor out of the Melbourne University and started reading it. The result? Well, I accosted more than one person and made them listen to or read certain poems. I went home and wrote certain poems, including “Testimony.” Then when I found books of his essays, and Without End in bookshops I immediately bought them. The days I walked into Readings and swore to myself that I just couldn’t buy any books today… that I couldn’t afford it. But whenever I found Zagajewski’s work I was scared I wouldn’t see it in Australia again. Though I suspect it’s getting to be more and more available. So—meeting him. Hearing him speak. Listening to him read. And talking to him about music—about Shostakovich and about Messiaen. About Chopin and about Mahler. About Lutosławski and about Pärt. It made me crave music!If you haven’t read his work, please, please do. Here are a few quotes from his talk at the Lannan reading on Thursday night:
"A dissenter is someone who knows the answer—and more and more I felt that to write poetry was to know nothing."
"I think poetry is an instrument that measures the world. An instrument is a scale—but there is no knowledge built into the instrument."
"I think we survive as poets thanks to a system of illusions. We do something, and we think we do something else. And my illusion is a search for radiance."
"The border between poetry of dissent and questioning poetry is not very thick, and I think there is probably always something dissenting about poetry.
"Poetry by definition is a dissent—because it is read by few, written by few, with high standards. It’s elitist, but elitist in the least exclusive sense, in that it doesn’t cost any money. It’s a very democratic elite."
