A little more on Christian Wiman, I think, having finished the book this morning. (I mentioned this at supper and Albus said, "Doesn't it usually take you a really long time to finish a book?" and I went, huh? And then oh! Finished reading a book, not writing one. Yeah, that I can do in a morning, though this book took me every morning of this week, and I could likely sit down and read it all over again and find all new material that chimes true, and differently, a second time around.
Then I went and looked up Christian Wiman online, to see, rather morbidly, whether he was still alive (he spent seven years writing the book, and during that time was undergoing treatment for incurable cancer, so my compulsion to know wasn't completely out there). He is. I found an interview he'd done with a very kindly looking man named Bill Moyers, whom I'll admit I'd never heard of. (On a side note, I suspect I would enjoy watching more of Moyers' interviews.) (On another side note, this must have been a "watch random videos" day, because I'd started my morning with a lecture by Brene Brown, whom everybody but me probably already knows for her work on vulnerability; and I liked it, too, and her message about how to be with people in need, but it didn't speak to me in the same way that Christian Wiman's book did, maybe because I didn't have to work as hard to claim to understand what Brown was saying. Maybe I like working hard to figure something out, like the insights are more earned and therefore more personal to me, more personally valuable for being more challenging.)
Where was I?
Oh, the interview with Christian Wiman. Two things. One, the interview is worth watching if you like to hear poets read their own poetry. He reads several. Two, the part where he says that he doesn't feel like a poet. He says it's only when he writes a poem that he feels like a poet. He added that it's different to write prose, and maybe that's partially true, but I know that I feel the same way about writing fiction. I don't feel like a fiction writer during the in-between times. I don't even believe that I can do it -- except when I am.
Tonight I am sitting beside an indoor soccer field. I can write this, it's true. It doesn't feel like a struggle, more like a pleasure. But it's simply a record of where I'm at. It lacks structure and larger purpose. It isn't meant to last. But even as I write that, I wonder, what the heck is? Isn't it presumption to think it, that one might ever work on something meant to last?
And yet.Labels: Big Thoughts, blogging, books, reading