A bit of a conversation with myself

[shemthepenman]

Does it matter what all the other people say?  Why write for a world that never knows what it wants?  I always thought a writer should write something simply for the joy of writing it, that one should write something because you can't NOT write it.  People can read passion between the lines.  I say write with passion anything that it gives you joy to write about, relevant or not, and come what may.  Then, even if the poem is not well received, it still wasn't a waste of time because you were doing something you love.  You have made something that pleases you, and spent happy hours doing it.  Play with the words, revel in them, adore them, and forget about the eyes on the other end of the adventure.  And who knows, maybe you were writing for a generation that has not yet been born.  That is my answer to the original conversation.  

i think what you said is true. we should definitely write because we want to write, us, ourselves, as individuals. self-indulgence is often criticised as a negative thing; but, i think, without it there really would be no innovations in art. . .  philosophically speaking, i cannot deny that we always write for the Other, but in the moment of creating, producing, the individual 'self' is spread out; until, the I/Other dualism is not appropriate or a useful concept.

but, and i may have read Leanne's dialogue wrong, the problem is what to do when you have nothing left to say? do you stop, satisfied that you have written all you wanted? or do you seek out new pathways? is it forced? are you compromising your integrity? you know you have nothing left to say. now you're just waffling [yes, i am fully aware of the irony]. yet, you cannot be satisfied. you've got the habit of writing and thinking poetry. i think of it like the concept of the 'paranoid or hypochondriac body without organs'; that is, crudely stated, one makes oneself a body without organs [poetry], but nothing passes across the surface, no vibrations or sensations.

"So why these examples, why must we start there? Emptied bodies instead full ones. What happened? Is it really so sad and dangerous to be fed up with seeing with your eyes, breathing with your lungs, swallowing with your mouth, talking with your tongue, thinking with your brain, having an anus and larynx, head and legs? Why not walk on your head, sing with your sinuses, see through your skin, breathe with your belly: the simple Thing, the Entity, the full Body, the stationary Voyage, Anorexia, cutaneous Vision, Yoga, Krishna, Love, Experimentation. Where psychoanalysis says, "Stop, find your self again," we should say instead, "Let's go further still, we haven't found our BwO yet, we haven't sufficiently dismantled our self." Substitute forgetting for anamnesis, experimentation for interpretation. Find your body without organs. Find out how to make it. It's a question of life and death, youth and old age, sad­ness and joy. It is where everything is played out."

~Deleuze

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Yes, after the thing is written, if you look at it and think it is actually something decent, it is nice to have others acknowledge it, and maybe help tweak it to make it palatable to others besides yourself.  But, the germ of the idea, the seed ... that should be pure passion for the game don't you think?   I mean, it's one thing if you sit down to write a text book or research paper.  No one expects passion there, and it has a completely different function.  But there is little to no money or glory in poetry, and when people read poetry they read it to breathe in someone else's exhilaration, to feel a momentary burst of someone else's pain or pleasure or fascination with something.  They can't read that feeling if you don't write the feeling into it.  The only reason I can see to write poetry it is for the love of it.

i disagree that people read poetry purely as a kind of emotional vicariousness. there are all sorts of reasons people read poetry. and all it really comes down to is this: did they? did you want them to? also, and i have said it before, poetry is founded on a gregarious system. to write "for the love of poetry" is already to admit a 'love' for that particular system. but, it is complicated. in the "moment" we become a new multiplicity. others are involved necessarily, but it isn't a binary or trinary system, etc. there are no units. em. . . this is starting to sound like our friend Heidegger. we think in false dichotomies because we atomize everything into ontological units. I and Other. I/You. but, i do not write for other people, i write before other people, or with them.

"You lose yourself, you reappear
You suddenly find you got nothing to fear
Alone you stand with nobody near
When a trembling distant voice, unclear
Startles your sleeping ears to hear
That somebody thinks they really found you

A question in your nerves is lit
Yet you know there is no answer fit to satisfy
Insure you not to quit
To keep it in your mind and not forget
That it is not he or she or them or it
That you belong to."

~Bob Dylan