I think those of us who use language are always trying for this, trying to keep everything from floating away by trying to write about it despite failure.

Martha Ronk

Categorized in : Thinking Writing Always Trying

I can't remember the past, or I can't see very clearly, or I've gotten older and the person I was isn't there anymore, and the place I grew up isn't where I live now.

grew-up remember past

I can't move my body slowly. I can't move the line slowly. So I end up with way too much, often opaque to me later.

opaque body moving

I spend a lot of time revising. I'm not somebody who can move slowly.

revising moving

I know that in some ways I operate from a kind of antiquated interest in imagery, while many contemporary poets are not so interested in imagery. I think part of it is my training, and just my visual sense of things.

training way thinking

One of the reasons I like immersing myself in different texts, putting myself in the company of other writers, is that they do change your vocabulary. They change what you write about or they change the length of lines.

vocabulary different writing

Each of us is present, but partially.

I think about the kinds of gardens that Queen Elizabeth put up. She made gardens in the shape of an "E," for Elizabeth, just one more way in which she used symbolism to solidify her reign: appearing as the Virgin Queen, for example, or wearing a dress embroidered with eyes and ears to indicate that she knew all that was going on in her castle; she had spies.

garden queens eye

For me, failure has to be acknowledged, needs to be faced in some way.

I'm really interested in what you remember, how you remember, what your perspective is as opposed to somebody else's.

perspective remember

Looking out a window from different vantage points changes what you see and therefore what you write.

vantage-point different writing

I'm in California, so I know people who are natives who tell me there's lots of weather here, but it's not the same as being in Vermont. Since I grew up on the East Coast I miss that weather all the time. You'd think I'd get used to not having it, but I don't.

california weather thinking

Often poets fall into groups that exclude others, and don't pay attention to those who write in different ways. It seems so limited to me.

groups writing fall

I want literature to open all the doors that I can't open by myself, and to allow me to see things that I wouldn't otherwise see.

literature want doors

I try to attach myself to things around me so that they don't slip away.

One of the things I've always thought is that if I were to write a poetics, it would have to do with the poetics of failure, and the way in which all the things that you claim or that you try for are already based on the limits of language.

writing trying way

Language is as fragile as the little alpine plant.

plant language littles

You can get a sense of the wonderful power of framing by holding your fingers up in a kind of square, walking around the room and framing it differently - how that changes the nature of what you think the room is like.

squares rooms thinking

The days start to be charged not because tomorrow you're leaving, but because in three weeks you're leaving. The future impinges. So you start to think about the frame.

leaving three thinking

I prefer always to think that I am creating a book, not a series of stand-alone poems.

creating book thinking

Shakespeare, of course, makes us ever aware of transience, not only in the sonnets, but also powerfully in his plays - spectacles for a brief period of time and then gone, as when Prospero describes the pageant fading, leaving "not a rack behind."

leaving gone play