If I am repaired, can we meet again for the first time, in all of the places I have feared to go, and then, again, in all of the places I will have forgotten, if I am repaired?




SC




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Here is the desk drawer in which all of my odds and ends are kept, tidbits that would otherwise never see the light of day.











Sunday, February 23, 2014

After Sitting for a While Sunday Morning


At times, when the words wouldn’t come, he would search images of the great authors, as if, in those dark mannerisms and confident smiles he might find some common thread, a shared squint or folding of the hands, that, with practice, he could master and thus join their ranks.


           

11 comments:

  1. I would love to know who you have on your "great authors" list. Sometimes I find my writing reflects the style of whoever I happen to be reading at the moment, like I haven't yet found my own voice and am still searching for you I am.

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    1. These particular 'great authors', were the tried and trues... Hemingway, Faulkner, Joyce, etc... Great not necessarily meaning favorite. My favs tend to to be less pensive in their photographs.

      I do the same thing, from book to book, author to author, I find my 'voice' bending in that new direction... it's frustrating at times, helpful at others. Part of the long, hard road, I guess.

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  2. those author photos are probably more important than we want to think they are, at least in terms of a book's reception in the wide world ... but sometimes the most unassuming, clerkish little fellow -- kafka, for instance --- points the way to the most expansive of worlds. and yet ... i remember a picture of faulkner, most likely drunk in a ratty old coat, and i wanted to be him, because something shone/ there ...

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    1. If booze and a ratty old coat were all it took. Sigh.

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  3. and i had read images wrongly before i saw your comment. i was not thinking of photographs at all but the image of the writers themselves, necessarily men, huh, not just because you are a man but because ... (there are complications with the role of women in almost any aspect of notable society/history, huh again.) i was thinking about the solitude of the writer and then invariably the wisdom arrived at.

    jack gilbert in "Alone on Christmas in Japan":

    Wondering if the quiet I feel is that happiness wise people speak of, or the modulation that is the acquiescence to death beginning.

    have you read gilbert? there is no one like him at all. not at all. his Collected Works is a must.

    xo
    erin

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  4. Steven, you have a common thread all right... you have the whole ball of yarn. You are there, sitting shoulder to shoulder.

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  5. William Faulkner... he would stride around Oxford, MS... all duded up... and the locals would refer to him as 'Count No-count'...

    Sometimes, it takes a life time for one's abilities to be recognized... or come to light...

    Now, Oxford thinks he's the bee-knees...

    ~shoes~

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  6. I'm sure some uniting is on the cards! Nice piece Steven!

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  7. Oh how we try to mimic others. If just being ourselves wasn't great enough.

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