Saturday, January 2, 2010

Poetry and Time

What kind of meaningful writing can happen when one is pressed for time, when one has all of two minutes to write something? Maybe not much; maybe a lot. It all depends.

William Carlos Williams used to write poems, or scraps of poems, or scraps of anything, on his prescription pads at eleven o'clock at night, when he'd finally finished with his demanding job as a pediatrician. Or he'd type away furiously for fifteen minutes. He wrote entire books using this method.

Most of us want to write, but make excuses for why we cannot, including: "I have no time." Williams, by example, refutes all of these claims. But it took a tremendous amount of will power and desire on his part. And he also moved into "poetic mode" at the drop of a hat. Stopping by the side of the road on his way to a house call, he would scribble furiously for a few seconds, then resume driving.

His time became Now. That's not a bad way to think about time, if one wants to write.

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