RE: "trying to construct lasting meaning in the face of the destructive, corrosive push of history..." - - I hope no one here is trying to construct a "LASTING anything" without being aware of the facts.
No library will bother to create a digital card for a poet whose output has not won a significant award, i.e., the Pulitzer, Yale Series of Younger Poets, or the like.
For most poets and writers, bookstores will not stock your book.
For most poets and writers, no university will archive your papers.
Your name, your poetry, your books will evaporate into nameless debris like Ozymandius.
Depressing? Not at all. Just reality.
There will be no "legacy" nor a monument to you in Central Park.
Now - - go and write your heart out anyway. For the sheer joy and wonder of creating.
... defining oneself by the make believe. It speaks to me a lot more than the notion that we should write to find ourselves. Because make believe is dreaming and it is joy, and that's why I write. I read Sisyphus as a teenager and it meant more to me than The Plague or The Stranger, rites of passage of the bookish gang I hung out with. I'll go back to it. It can teach me different things now. Thank you.
"They assuage our anxiety by mitigating the risks of feeling humiliated, instead of accepting that our doubt has a realistic basis" I needed to read this today, Max. I miss your youtube videos.
Camus' sentiment here is similar to Keats' notion of negative capability, expressed in a letter to his brother and sister-in-law: “it struck me what quality went to form a Man of Achievement, especially in Literature, and which Shakespeare possessed so enormously - I mean Negative Capability, that is, when a man is capable of being in uncertainties, mysteries, doubts, without any irritable reaching after fact and reason.”
"There is a moral to it. It teaches that a man defines himself by his make believe as well as by his sincere impulses."
"If you’re feeling cursed, that means you’re doing it right. Camus doesn’t tell us that Sisyphus is happy, or even should be happy. Instead, he ends his essay by stating, “One must imagine Sisyphus happy.”
Dale Carnegie said "Who you think, you are." If your thoughts are always negative, you are negative. If your thoughts are positive, you are positive. But the artist is that animal that navigates between total hell and heaven. Someone famous that I can't remember by name said "Your plight, becomes your fight."
I love the metaphor of Sisyphus because in essence it describes the human existence. We struggle to get our ideas recognized, and when we reach the top, we have to start all over again. But I also believe that when we start again, we do not start from zero. We start with the previous knowledge of where we were before. The Tao says "Do without doing." Which to many is interpreted as engage in that activity until it becomes fluid, part of you and, and happens without effort.
So to me it's much better to engage, accept and welcome the hill. Happiness is not found in reaching the top, but in knowing that you tried with all you got.
"Our work needn’t be viewed as a load to bear. We can reframe it as an honor to raise."
Absolutely. I think the quote from Billy Wilder is apt here too, "You're as good as the best thing you've ever done." I think writers/creators sometimes forget that. It helps the rock roll a little more smoothly. And the rock also wants a strong Sisyphus that won't give up, because the rock doesn't want to crash either.
"He continues his thankless effort not as a tortured denizen of the underworld but because he takes pride in it, because “at every step the hope of succeeding [upholds] him.” Our work needn’t be viewed as a load to bear. We can reframe it as an honor to raise."
Thoughtful work, Max. Very fine and honest. Don't forget the sun will also expand into a red giant and/or the Andromeda galaxy will collide into the Milky Way at some point in the future and unless we as a species have mastered interplanetary colonization everything humankind ever knew is destined for stardust, including all the writing editors took instead of ours.
I think, though, this relates to everyone's personal reason for writing. Of course I want people to read my stuff, and I've been lucky to squeak something through now and again, but I write - as I think many others do as well - because it's just going to happen anyway and has been happening anyway for decades. I think if I didn't or couldn't write the crazy things that come up in my head I would probably shrivel up. And I'm not sure publication is my goal, or should be the goal. Whenever, when younger, I've tried to write to fill a certain editor's aesthetic it never came out to the good. I've had to search for editors who are just as crazy as I am and have had some good luck in that. So, at 70, it's all comes down to my usual and well-practiced responses...
When rejected - well that editor is an idiot who probably had their creativity stifled by earning yet another useless MFA in the world.
or
When accepted - I'm going to end up wishing I could rewrite it in seven months anyway, so what's to celebrate...
In the meantime I got another rejection this morning and of the best writing I think I've done in years (where have we heard that before?). The same piece is still sitting in twelve other places so there's always hope. But the piece EXISTS, which is miracle enough for now.
No I'm not trying to minimize the conundrum or marginalize your sentiment. I see you exposing part of your soul up there, and I truly admire that. I'm just saying "publish or die" is maybe the wrong way to look at things. Hell, coming out of the punk/poetry slam days, for me homicide always seemed a better answer than suicide.
I had achieved my dream of getting into an MFA program in poetry just as Covid started. I’m now 77 so online worked well for me. I didn’t have to drive and could hear much better than I could in a classroom. Then I had a stroke as we resumed in person. The stroke was Jan 1. That fall I was diagnosed triple negative breast cancer. I’ve had to drop classes. My prof gave me an assignment to write. For some reason I have not written a poem since
Camus is someone I feel close to and return to again and again. In the context of Sisyphus, I often think of his line, "One must imagine Sisyphus happy." This aligns well with the life of a working poet.
And read Harold Bloom’s “How To Read and Why,” which also translates to how to write and why—even though we’re never one the Greats. Bloom also wrote about creating poetry under the influence of anxiety of our predecessors in “The Anxiety of Influence.” Bloom is great for the “how” and “why” of everything.
It was his joy in being alive, Camas reminds us, that kept Sisyphus going. The best artists, then, seem to be those who revel in life--lust for it-- despite the absurdity.
The meaning or meaninglessness of writing more with life itself, though I don't quite follow the Sisyphus analogy. I read Camus 's Stranger recently. It's short and bizarre. I loved the ending sentence.
What helps me when the rejections pile up and I start wondering, is realizing that I cannot not write. Absurd as that may sound. Sometimes it helps, too, to take a break and read the poets that speak to me, from whatever century. Sort of priming the pump. Finding someone to argue with, who makes me reach for my pen and paper, gets me out of the slump. And I do believe we must honor the gifts we've been given by using them. Who knows whose heart we touch? That's a good thought.
RE: "trying to construct lasting meaning in the face of the destructive, corrosive push of history..." - - I hope no one here is trying to construct a "LASTING anything" without being aware of the facts.
No library will bother to create a digital card for a poet whose output has not won a significant award, i.e., the Pulitzer, Yale Series of Younger Poets, or the like.
For most poets and writers, bookstores will not stock your book.
For most poets and writers, no university will archive your papers.
Your name, your poetry, your books will evaporate into nameless debris like Ozymandius.
Depressing? Not at all. Just reality.
There will be no "legacy" nor a monument to you in Central Park.
Now - - go and write your heart out anyway. For the sheer joy and wonder of creating.
This is fantastic.
... defining oneself by the make believe. It speaks to me a lot more than the notion that we should write to find ourselves. Because make believe is dreaming and it is joy, and that's why I write. I read Sisyphus as a teenager and it meant more to me than The Plague or The Stranger, rites of passage of the bookish gang I hung out with. I'll go back to it. It can teach me different things now. Thank you.
"They assuage our anxiety by mitigating the risks of feeling humiliated, instead of accepting that our doubt has a realistic basis" I needed to read this today, Max. I miss your youtube videos.
Camus' sentiment here is similar to Keats' notion of negative capability, expressed in a letter to his brother and sister-in-law: “it struck me what quality went to form a Man of Achievement, especially in Literature, and which Shakespeare possessed so enormously - I mean Negative Capability, that is, when a man is capable of being in uncertainties, mysteries, doubts, without any irritable reaching after fact and reason.”
"There is a moral to it. It teaches that a man defines himself by his make believe as well as by his sincere impulses."
"If you’re feeling cursed, that means you’re doing it right. Camus doesn’t tell us that Sisyphus is happy, or even should be happy. Instead, he ends his essay by stating, “One must imagine Sisyphus happy.”
Dale Carnegie said "Who you think, you are." If your thoughts are always negative, you are negative. If your thoughts are positive, you are positive. But the artist is that animal that navigates between total hell and heaven. Someone famous that I can't remember by name said "Your plight, becomes your fight."
I love the metaphor of Sisyphus because in essence it describes the human existence. We struggle to get our ideas recognized, and when we reach the top, we have to start all over again. But I also believe that when we start again, we do not start from zero. We start with the previous knowledge of where we were before. The Tao says "Do without doing." Which to many is interpreted as engage in that activity until it becomes fluid, part of you and, and happens without effort.
So to me it's much better to engage, accept and welcome the hill. Happiness is not found in reaching the top, but in knowing that you tried with all you got.
"Our work needn’t be viewed as a load to bear. We can reframe it as an honor to raise."
Absolutely. I think the quote from Billy Wilder is apt here too, "You're as good as the best thing you've ever done." I think writers/creators sometimes forget that. It helps the rock roll a little more smoothly. And the rock also wants a strong Sisyphus that won't give up, because the rock doesn't want to crash either.
"He continues his thankless effort not as a tortured denizen of the underworld but because he takes pride in it, because “at every step the hope of succeeding [upholds] him.” Our work needn’t be viewed as a load to bear. We can reframe it as an honor to raise."
This post was just what I needed today.
Thoughtful work, Max. Very fine and honest. Don't forget the sun will also expand into a red giant and/or the Andromeda galaxy will collide into the Milky Way at some point in the future and unless we as a species have mastered interplanetary colonization everything humankind ever knew is destined for stardust, including all the writing editors took instead of ours.
I think, though, this relates to everyone's personal reason for writing. Of course I want people to read my stuff, and I've been lucky to squeak something through now and again, but I write - as I think many others do as well - because it's just going to happen anyway and has been happening anyway for decades. I think if I didn't or couldn't write the crazy things that come up in my head I would probably shrivel up. And I'm not sure publication is my goal, or should be the goal. Whenever, when younger, I've tried to write to fill a certain editor's aesthetic it never came out to the good. I've had to search for editors who are just as crazy as I am and have had some good luck in that. So, at 70, it's all comes down to my usual and well-practiced responses...
When rejected - well that editor is an idiot who probably had their creativity stifled by earning yet another useless MFA in the world.
or
When accepted - I'm going to end up wishing I could rewrite it in seven months anyway, so what's to celebrate...
In the meantime I got another rejection this morning and of the best writing I think I've done in years (where have we heard that before?). The same piece is still sitting in twelve other places so there's always hope. But the piece EXISTS, which is miracle enough for now.
No I'm not trying to minimize the conundrum or marginalize your sentiment. I see you exposing part of your soul up there, and I truly admire that. I'm just saying "publish or die" is maybe the wrong way to look at things. Hell, coming out of the punk/poetry slam days, for me homicide always seemed a better answer than suicide.
I had achieved my dream of getting into an MFA program in poetry just as Covid started. I’m now 77 so online worked well for me. I didn’t have to drive and could hear much better than I could in a classroom. Then I had a stroke as we resumed in person. The stroke was Jan 1. That fall I was diagnosed triple negative breast cancer. I’ve had to drop classes. My prof gave me an assignment to write. For some reason I have not written a poem since
Camus is someone I feel close to and return to again and again. In the context of Sisyphus, I often think of his line, "One must imagine Sisyphus happy." This aligns well with the life of a working poet.
“Now—go and write your heart out anyway.”
Nice!
And read Harold Bloom’s “How To Read and Why,” which also translates to how to write and why—even though we’re never one the Greats. Bloom also wrote about creating poetry under the influence of anxiety of our predecessors in “The Anxiety of Influence.” Bloom is great for the “how” and “why” of everything.
It was his joy in being alive, Camas reminds us, that kept Sisyphus going. The best artists, then, seem to be those who revel in life--lust for it-- despite the absurdity.
Intriguing post. I like the comparison of s
The meaning or meaninglessness of writing more with life itself, though I don't quite follow the Sisyphus analogy. I read Camus 's Stranger recently. It's short and bizarre. I loved the ending sentence.
Excellent essay! Hits hard.
What helps me when the rejections pile up and I start wondering, is realizing that I cannot not write. Absurd as that may sound. Sometimes it helps, too, to take a break and read the poets that speak to me, from whatever century. Sort of priming the pump. Finding someone to argue with, who makes me reach for my pen and paper, gets me out of the slump. And I do believe we must honor the gifts we've been given by using them. Who knows whose heart we touch? That's a good thought.