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On Writing–2

By 28 May 2009No Comments

The essay I need to write is to be on place, on literature, on a change in the West from pure extraction to the extraction of spirit and the leaving of the land intact.

How do you tell of a love for the land? A desire to live as one.

I walk. I take a sunset ride with friends and watch the mountains turn. First from white to grey. Then the range gathers a glow reflecting orange pink off the clouds. Now turning grey black with the coming darkness. We rode the river. Up to where the trail splits off the old road and turns back downstream. Floating on full suspensions along the banks, staying with the water running downstream. Up Coal Creek and back to the Elk. To the Brick House for a beer. And home in the dark.

Back at home I continue the search. I pull books of the shelves in my living room.

We live where we live for landscape and seasons, for the place of it, but also for the time of it, daily and historical time.

Here at Eagle Pond, Donald Hall (1990)

Of the more formal poets, Donald Hall is a star. His Life Work is a must read for everyone even half contemplating a life of writing. Like the Real Work by Gary Snyder, the life of a writer is deconstructed and examined without sentiment or prejudice. And it ain’t pretty. It’s fucking hard.

And so I read. Take notes. Bits of this and bits of that. The first lines of a raft of novels. Poems. Patrick Lane. Gary Snyder. Billy Collins. Anne Michaels.

And day was night,
land was sea,
the earth fell out of the sky.

Pillar of Fire, Anne Michaels

And I remember once telling a friend, a student, when writers are stuck they read. It’s pure and simple avoidance.

I say to myself, this is not avoidance, this is research. And continue.