[Robert Meyer]

What about including your poetry in a novel? Like a suspense novel where the killer leaves poems, your poems, at the crime scene? Or a sci-fi novel where someone in the future finds old poems, your poems, and it has some impact on the story?

Robert Meyer

[Tom Jardine]

Robert,

You are on track. And at the same time, not to counter, poetry needs to go where it is welcome. Remember that stupid program of putting poems on busses and subways?

Carol,

I know what you mean, Maybe what is most important is that a person should do what they have the spirit for when it comes to the practical side of what to do for a living. I think you are saying that if you weren't working would you write much of the time?

Katy,

I didn't know your predicament.

The idea I am trying to explain is that any art is an equation: Time = art. The art won't happen unless time is spent, and often sacrifices are made one way or another.


Here is a string of thoughts;

1.To live simply is often not possible anymore.
2. Sometime time is spent earning money to support other needs which cost money. (example; spending money on clothes which are appropriate for a particular job.)
3. A few years ago, we didn't have ISP's to pay for, or inkjet cartridges, or cell phones, which some of us use instead of landlines.
4. There is a trap in careers; people think they will get ahead and THEN have to time to write, but then things happen, gas goes up, the cost of food has gone up 40% recently, the neighborhood goes sour or the wife wants a bigger hut.
5. Wives. Husbands. Children. Do they come first, or does the art?
6. In the art world, there is a saying: You grow when you show. Whenever you stop doing the art, when you start again, the level of the art picks up where you left off. So the rule is, write every day, or every week. Skip five, ten years, and time, not you, goes forward.
7. Just to pick someone everyone knows, think of how much time Shakespeare spent actually writing down with ink on paper all that he wrote. Add it up and break it down to how many hours a day--written by hand on paper with one of those old quill type pens, whatever it was.
8. Professors with tenure scare me because they know stuff. This isn't new: art is in the discovery. The creation of a little style in poetry is for nitwits: there are higher levels to go to, forms to challenge.
9. How many decisions have you made for life circumstances that relate specifically to writing poetry? There are also many wonderful distractions out there for all of us. Have you given any up?
10. I think it is far more admirable for a creative person to be creative with their career, such as having their own business or doing something dynamic rather than intellectual passivity.


Wilbur says, I read recently somewhere, maybe it is best not to live entirely for poetry. We all have to have lives to live out from under rocks, but we find our own levels, don't we?

TJ

[Carol Taylor]

Tom, I'm saying that idleness is not conducive to art or to anything else, at least not in my case. The less I have to do the less I do. Few of the projects I'm saving until I get more time materialize when I get more time. I'm not so busy that I can't find time do the ones at the top of my list. Unless something happens to move the put-offs up the list they just go on being put off while other things are added above them.

When I have something to write about being busy doesn't stop me. I'll jot down snatches of an idea for a poem at work or in the car or on a pad of paper by my bed and add to it until I'm ready to sit down at the computer and knock it out. When you are idle you mentally gear down. You lose self-confidence and effectiveness. I'm more productive when I feel good about myself than when I'm bored or miserable, and my poetry is less likely to smack of self-pity if I do write it. If you want something done, ask a busy person.

And if I don't have something to write about I can sit and stare at a piece of paper or computer screen eight hours a day for six weeks and nothing will happen except that I'll be bored. I might as well be working.

Carol

[Katy Evans-Bush]

I agree, once again. Tom, I have no predicament! I love my job, it's a great job. I love my kids. They definitely come first, but in what sense? I didn't stay married to their dad. I'm happier now than really almost ever before. I've certainly made decisions based on writing: look at me. And I think the kids like having a mother who does stuff & knows people.

You're right about some things, but of course people's circumstances are so different. And temperaments. I write on buses, in bed, with my kids in the room, in cafes. Whatever. If someone is finding excuses not to write then they don't really want to.

Of course, lately, I spend more time on here than writing poetry, and that may be a problem! It's too easy. However, that's a different thing. I have friends who have given all their time over "to write" who then find they can't - and the expectation is such a weight, all day, every day, what are you supposed to do? At least any little thing I do I feel like, Phew! I did that, then!

Oh, waffle waffle. I'm off to bed.

KEB