bats, owls, hedging your bets
February 2, 2009
‘There are dark shadows on the earth, but its lights are stronger in the contrast. Some men, like bats or owls, have better eyes for the darkness than for the light.’ Charles Dickens, The Pickwick Papers
I see even better than you, Mr Dickens...
Who do we compare ourselves with when writing? During the process itself, all comparison should surely be banned. But upon reflection, it’s inevitable that some influences become clear, and that some assessment of ourselves against others takes place. This self-criticism is the only kind that really matters, after all.
It would of course, be hugely unproductive for a novelist to set out to be ‘as good as Dickens’ or a poet to set herself up as the next Milton. Unless one is psychotic, such reckless confidence would be bound to end in failure. But if one just occasionally finds a teaspoon of the richness of invention shown by Boz, or a tinge of his humour, that should be more than enough. (It’s hard to imagine any comparison with Milton bringing comfort. Apart from a mythical creature who is writing several volumes on the history of physics and the creation of the universe in rolling, unstoppable Big Bang rhyme. And if you are that person, the word ‘ambitious’ is probably apposite, dear little Satan of science.)
To look at one’s writing and say ‘it’s not as good as X’ (if X is not a joke) is to look at things through the night-coloured glasses Dickens evokes in the quotation given above. Far better to say does this represent a development of my own voice? Your own voice is inevitably formed by the previous words of others, but this should be a liberation, not a restriction.
At the same time, until you have read and continue to read as much as you possible can of writers good and bad, you will not have the framework for honestly assessing your own work. Creative writing courses that encourage people to ‘write what they know’ without seeking to increase their knowledge of literature are hideous aberrations. To write is to enter the maze of all that has been written before:
‘…mazes intricate,
Eccentric, intervolved, yet regular
…when most irregular they seem’
(Milton)
You’re never going to get out of that maze. Most will sit and look at single leaves growing on the hedges making up the maze, and try to describe them, rather than reaching the centre where Milton and Dickens (and others) are having an endless Pickwickian picnic. (Milton at a picnic is a terrifying idea, incidentally.) Given they do this carefully and respectfully, with humour, emotion, inventiveness, or with hedge-trimming satire, nothing could be more valuable. If we just blunder along, relying on nothing but luck, the result will probably be less than enlightening.
I am not Emily Dickinson, nor was meant to be
January 26, 2009
As I approach the launch of my first book, I can’t help regretting the loss of my exclusive relationship with the poems inside it. Once it was just me and these works, with no third parties looking over our shoulders. Of course, I am pleased to be published. But one part of me, a part that I have shamelessly nurtured over the years, prefers the life of fantasy and dreams to the real world of readers and print.
It’s a well-worn trope (I bought it at the second-hand trope store) to compare a book with a baby. I always suspect a hidden insult to reside in this sort of comparison, at least when applied to the writings of women. It’s as if the work is less an intellectual endeavour than an extension of biology; poet as womb. Of course that is to ignore the intellectual aspects of pregnancy, and the fact that in advanced societies at least, the continuation of pregnancy is a willed act, no longer a question of mere chance. But there is something about the way my book now has a life of its own that does recall childbirth, in all its terrifying complexity.
I admire Emily Dickinson for her steadfast refusal to seek publication once she understood that it would mean compromise. That and the fact that she was unique and seemingly almost timeless in the invention of her own poetic language. But we can’t all be solitary geniuses, can we? (Most of us aren’t any sort of genius at all, not even noisy, self-promoting ones.) And publication, that rendering of the personal into the public sphere, the changing of monologue into dialogue, is necessary, if our conversations are to stretch beyond our immediate community.
All very serious. But here is a poem written about my first book. You can see why I say I am not Emily. But, on the other hand, so what?
The poet addresses her first book
Oh my little treasure, with your spine just like a real spine
and your two short footnotes; smooth, appropriate and small.
I would swaddle you in gossamer, rock you in a golden crib.
All too soon you’ll be waddling out amongst dangerous critics
(if one so angelic and slim could ever so perambulate.)
Strange readers may not see your brilliance, and overlook you
for the thicker, slicker, tarmac roads of easy fattening prose.
Those lard-backs, perched like obese babushka dolls
above the Muse’s cuter, lighter, cuddle-worthy spawn.
Hush, dear bookie. Drink deep.
No-one will ever love you as I do.
P.S. Cottier
PS Cottier 