Despondent Poets

[billy]

I also wondered about using some people who are still living-- that seems weak, as does the number of people involved. I was rather hoping that a predilection for anapaests, or terza rima would be indicators of some strange phenomenon -- to say nothing of dactyls....

i think that more free and blank verse poets topped themselves than sonnet writers, etc

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Winter won't die this year. It's relentlessly coming back to see me. I'm going stir crazy in this town. This whole town is one room; or rather one stockroom in the back of a Wal-Mart.

People find the pathological context in writers and artists more entertaining than their actual work sometimes. The work does or doesn't have its own merit, but the writer's life and way of working is just as stupid as any other work people do. I think it's more useful the more stupid it is. There are writers that neurotically edit everything they write until it's good writing; and there are writers that psychotically impose their writing onto what is good. And all of that's done with different levels of failure and success; and rightly so.

You have good writers, that do their work, entertain, inspire, inform, disturb, get paid, get laid, and live like any decent human being should, or any decent human should want to. And there are snobs and slobs. The snobs are offended and embarrassed by the slobs; and the slobs are bored and angered by the snobs. And the levels of success and opportunities for recognition, and the truth in the merit of the work and the dignity of the person doing the work are the same whether you're a snob or a slob, neurotic or psychotic or both, or an all around decent and respectable hack writer.

But whether what I say is true, or something else altogether is true, or nothing is true: whatever. There still remains the question if life is worth living. And I say that life isn't worth living, but making it worth living is worth something. And for a writer and artist to continue to make life seem worth living even for their own self, is what drives them to extreme acts of art, of crime, or despair and death. Because ultimately, all the things people are obsessed with, from money to homes to cars to food to love to sex to comfort to excitement to danger to truth to fights to joy to passion to sadness to hope to hopelessness are utterly pointless and incidental. Anger is stupid, love is stupid, writing is stupid, and all terribly useful. Nothing I do is incidental. Because I'm perfectly happy being superstitious and stupid. And when I start to feel a little too intelligent and honest about myself and the world, I get drunk, or don't drink at all for weeks, both gather the same effect, and I say things or do things or write things that shatter any reputation of intellectual integrity I might have shown to others or myself. Because life is just too painful to be right all the time.

people top themselves, some are poets, maybe suicide drives one to write a few sad poems first who knows. i can't really say i care one way or t'other. what some of the suicides did though, was bring some good poetry to the fore. plath and co would be a l less famous had they not took the time to top themselves, as far as i can tell rowen all living people are bad case studies when it comes to understanding suicide