Writers and the burning coal

Yesterday was a study in parallels and contrasts. I went to a poetry reading for Lou, a writing colleague who is in my writer's group and has just published his collection after almost a decade of trying. Afterwards, a young writer who is a stranger approached me and asked how she might join our writer's group.

Lou, the newly-published poet, is calm and confident as any writer can be in this vocation. The young stranger is ambitious and encouraged by her talent but eager to learn from the seasoned. The two could hardly be more different, in age, place in life, attitude. But both are essentially the same.

It struck me how writing is both a circle and a line. God has given some of us a burning coal, a yearning to create, to follow the Creator, and we fan that coal all our lives, almost involuntarily. As we get older we learn how to manage our passion, and sometimes something like success comes. We make friends with others who do the same thing, and limp along. And we see that others, young ones, have also been given that coal, and we see how they struggle as we did.

In a way, the young ones are the next in an unending human line. But in another, they are us, repeating a cycle that always begins with the gift of the coal.

For me, summer, which is coming soon, means sitting down at the computer for full days. Hopefully it will also mean writing. My novel of Greek prehistory, "Healing Knowledge," is on the front burner. But I will also be launching a novel blog soon, a project of fun and sentiment, which is at the moment called "Forward in a Strange Land." It is based on the imaginary nation of Borschland, which is mad for ice hockey. Some of you may have read about it here, in a blog that my son used to manage.

Amidst the ice hockey there was a plot brewing about an American, a Borschic poetess, and a bunch of Upright Bears. I'm going to pursue that this summer and hope you'll follow along. I will let you know when that blog is active.

Meanwhile, I encourage you to visit my colleague's website and buy his book of poetry, if you are so moved. I like his humble admission that his burning coal has no visible practical application-- that if "this world falls apart,"

Millenia of human struggle and invention
would be lost if it depended on us--
two clueless poets collecting sticks
along a dark road;
men of lifelong impracticality
depending on others to do
the functional things that repair our intricate
systems. 

And I also like it that he feels rhythm, music, and one might say poetry would still have to exist in that state of un-civilization:

...there would be the dance
you would certainly do at sunset to lift our spirits.
And to accompany you, I would find
a hollow reed and put my fingers
over the holes I'd burned through it
and begin to blow. 

 

Comments

[Sooze]

good post...here's to the circle, and the line. s