Pleasing Grandpa

I don't know what to write lately. The ideas that appeal to me most include a memoir about my relationship with my mother, and a short story written from the point of view of a young, floundering urbanite trying to find meaning in the modern world. Vague, the both of them.

But this second idea leads me to something I've been thinking a lot about. I think that in many ways I aim to please my dead grandfather in my writing. This is ludicrous for many reasons, not the least of which is that he's dead. I didn't like my grandfather, he thought being an artist was a total waste of time, he forced me to sit through his dry readings of romantic English poetry, and my outlook is completely different than his was. On a bigger level, I aim to write like those dry English authors because that is what has always been given to me as examples of exemplary writing. Nobody ever handed me something written by Jack Kerouac and said, "This writer is amazing." But I found him somehow, and was blown away by his contemporary, spontaneous, personal style. He's not polished or careful, but he's important and fun.

I've had a copy of Anna Karenina on my bookshelf for years. I've tried to read it several times but it fails to absorb me. Yet I cling to this idea that THAT is how writing should be. So I bore myself with my own writing! As an experiment, I am going to refuse to read classical, traditional literature. I'm also going to refuse to read modern writing that emulates aforementioned literature. I am going to seek out and explore experimental, modern writing. Autobiography of Red by Anne Carson springs to mind.

One of my first great loves was e.e. cummings. But I've let myself believe all the teachers and critics who say that cummings is inferior to T.S. Eliot and other linear, rational writers. I still prefer cummings. Somehow he managed to strike a balance between expressing his heart and being understood.

Since Feeling is First... (VII)

since feeling is first
who pays any attention
to the syntax of things
will never wholly kiss you;

wholly to be a fool
while Spring is in the world

my blood approves,
and kisses are a better fate
than wisdom
lady i swear by all flowers. Don't cry
- the best gesture of my brain is less than
your eyelids' flutter which says

we are for each other; then
laugh, leaning back in my arms
for life's not a paragraph

And death i think is no parenthesis

e.e. cummings

(photo of e.e. cummings)