A wonderful essay for all poets and writers and any one of a poetic heart, whether they have taken pen in hand or not. Insightful and instructive. It opens avenues of creation we desperately need. Now it is time to go write a poem with new tools and fresh light.
An ongoing conversation! Yes, this is what reading and writing affords. Cairns provides a helpful lens for both reader and writer to assess their desire to speak into the ever growing body of literature that shapes ourselves and the world. I have never felt that the anxiety of influence accurately captures this fascination (at least not wholly). Cairns demonstrates that writing is an opportunity to make meaning, and when we respond deliberately to those who have gone before, we can travel further. I love a poem as "a made thing capable of further making." We ourselves are being made in the act of wrestling words to the page. Thank you for this!
During my senior year of college, I was one of those in the hall, another teacher, another school, but there was no room. I split.
I became a science teacher, a clear heart calling. Retired, I am a grandma, mom and Bible teacher.
Now I read and read, but don't write much. There have been seasons when I planted rows of written words. In my private garden they bloomed, but few others visited.
Owning several well-read collections of Scott Cairns work and having enjoyably considered his opening interview in An Axe for the Frozen Sea, his familiar conversation with me echoes throughout the magnificent essay and poem — as do images of Annie Dillard. A physician for forty years, now retired, “Chemo with Coleridge” opens a particular new conversation with me this morning. Thank you, Scott Cairns. I’m off to converse with Coleridge again.
You had me at "poetry seminar with Annie Dillard" and her wise advice, but I'm also grateful for this whole essay, as well as the reminder of Eliot's brilliance here: “[n]o poet, no artist of any art, has his complete meaning alone. His significance, his appreciation is the appreciation of his relation to the dead poets and artists. You cannot value him alone; you must set him, for contrast and comparison, among the dead.” We are in deep, wide, extensive, brilliant company, and lest we ever forget, we just need to crack open a book instead of flicking on a screen...
Such a lovely essay. Thanks for sharing, Scott. I will be thinking about the idea of a poem as "a made thing capable of further making" for quite some time. Oh, to have had Annie Dillard as a professor! What a gift.
P.S. I gave your recent collection of poems to my Greek father-in-law, who is himself a poet. The perfect companion to this essay!
This was exactly what I needed, exactly when i needed it.
I have always had a talent for art, but found that it never suited for saying what I wanted to say. I stumbled into poetry after a wrenched heart, and found I had a capacity for evocative language.
But, looking back on the things I've written I find the "anecdotal" critique and apt one. I had come to this realization without being able to name it until I read this piece, so thank you. And thank you for illuminating a path out of it.
I'm not now, nor likely ever will be, your student; but I plan on joining in.
I think this works for reading most anything. Whenever I pick up an old novel or even a work of theology, I often feel like I'm having a converation with that writer. If the work becomes particularly meaningful to me, that writer will get added to my list of imaginary mentors and I'll go to them for "advice" often. Thank you for this essay!
Thanks for the insightful and enjoyable read. Your article sent me down some great new paths to follow. I ordered George Steiner's and your book, Correspondence with My Greeks. I also stored away some future purchases in my Amazon cart, including your poetry books, Scott, and Palpant's book. One can tell when a person has thought long and hard before writing an essay. Thank you for writing with such gravity.
Scott, this is SO good. I just forwarded it to three of the poets whose work I edit. And for the record, when I was an undergrad, I read George Steiner's Language and Silence at least three times. Oh, and when 30 people tried to get into Dave Smith's poetry workshop at the U of Utah, he went around the room and asked each poet what other poets they could learn from. If you said Robt Penn Warren, or Dickey, or Louis Simpson, you got in (I did). If you said Ginsberg or Snyder, you didn't.
Terrific essay. I am currently reading "An Axe for the Frozen Sea" and am savoring each conversation between Ben Palpant and poets.
Going through a dry season in which it has been a struggle to write, this invitation to further conversing with the dead (yet living), with those who have gone before, whose work has stood the test of time and speaks to us today, gives me the courage and desire to pick up my pen and keep trying.
What a remarkable essay and poem. Goodness, that last line...
I've had the pleasure of hearing Scott share these thoughts about 'conversations with dead poets' firsthand; I think of him often when I'm noodling at my desk with a copy of George Herbert or Malcolm Guite nearby, parsing out words that "do something." Poets cannot write poetry if they do not read it.
Thank you, Scott and thank you Annie Dillard. And Ekstasis/Inkwell.
A wonderful essay for all poets and writers and any one of a poetic heart, whether they have taken pen in hand or not. Insightful and instructive. It opens avenues of creation we desperately need. Now it is time to go write a poem with new tools and fresh light.
An ongoing conversation! Yes, this is what reading and writing affords. Cairns provides a helpful lens for both reader and writer to assess their desire to speak into the ever growing body of literature that shapes ourselves and the world. I have never felt that the anxiety of influence accurately captures this fascination (at least not wholly). Cairns demonstrates that writing is an opportunity to make meaning, and when we respond deliberately to those who have gone before, we can travel further. I love a poem as "a made thing capable of further making." We ourselves are being made in the act of wrestling words to the page. Thank you for this!
During my senior year of college, I was one of those in the hall, another teacher, another school, but there was no room. I split.
I became a science teacher, a clear heart calling. Retired, I am a grandma, mom and Bible teacher.
Now I read and read, but don't write much. There have been seasons when I planted rows of written words. In my private garden they bloomed, but few others visited.
Owning several well-read collections of Scott Cairns work and having enjoyably considered his opening interview in An Axe for the Frozen Sea, his familiar conversation with me echoes throughout the magnificent essay and poem — as do images of Annie Dillard. A physician for forty years, now retired, “Chemo with Coleridge” opens a particular new conversation with me this morning. Thank you, Scott Cairns. I’m off to converse with Coleridge again.
You had me at "poetry seminar with Annie Dillard" and her wise advice, but I'm also grateful for this whole essay, as well as the reminder of Eliot's brilliance here: “[n]o poet, no artist of any art, has his complete meaning alone. His significance, his appreciation is the appreciation of his relation to the dead poets and artists. You cannot value him alone; you must set him, for contrast and comparison, among the dead.” We are in deep, wide, extensive, brilliant company, and lest we ever forget, we just need to crack open a book instead of flicking on a screen...
Such a lovely essay. Thanks for sharing, Scott. I will be thinking about the idea of a poem as "a made thing capable of further making" for quite some time. Oh, to have had Annie Dillard as a professor! What a gift.
P.S. I gave your recent collection of poems to my Greek father-in-law, who is himself a poet. The perfect companion to this essay!
Thank you
"All poets are simultaneous in time." --Charles Williams
This was exactly what I needed, exactly when i needed it.
I have always had a talent for art, but found that it never suited for saying what I wanted to say. I stumbled into poetry after a wrenched heart, and found I had a capacity for evocative language.
But, looking back on the things I've written I find the "anecdotal" critique and apt one. I had come to this realization without being able to name it until I read this piece, so thank you. And thank you for illuminating a path out of it.
I'm not now, nor likely ever will be, your student; but I plan on joining in.
I think this works for reading most anything. Whenever I pick up an old novel or even a work of theology, I often feel like I'm having a converation with that writer. If the work becomes particularly meaningful to me, that writer will get added to my list of imaginary mentors and I'll go to them for "advice" often. Thank you for this essay!
Thanks for the insightful and enjoyable read. Your article sent me down some great new paths to follow. I ordered George Steiner's and your book, Correspondence with My Greeks. I also stored away some future purchases in my Amazon cart, including your poetry books, Scott, and Palpant's book. One can tell when a person has thought long and hard before writing an essay. Thank you for writing with such gravity.
Scott, this is SO good. I just forwarded it to three of the poets whose work I edit. And for the record, when I was an undergrad, I read George Steiner's Language and Silence at least three times. Oh, and when 30 people tried to get into Dave Smith's poetry workshop at the U of Utah, he went around the room and asked each poet what other poets they could learn from. If you said Robt Penn Warren, or Dickey, or Louis Simpson, you got in (I did). If you said Ginsberg or Snyder, you didn't.
Terrific essay. I am currently reading "An Axe for the Frozen Sea" and am savoring each conversation between Ben Palpant and poets.
Going through a dry season in which it has been a struggle to write, this invitation to further conversing with the dead (yet living), with those who have gone before, whose work has stood the test of time and speaks to us today, gives me the courage and desire to pick up my pen and keep trying.
What a remarkable essay and poem. Goodness, that last line...
I've had the pleasure of hearing Scott share these thoughts about 'conversations with dead poets' firsthand; I think of him often when I'm noodling at my desk with a copy of George Herbert or Malcolm Guite nearby, parsing out words that "do something." Poets cannot write poetry if they do not read it.
Thank you, Scott and thank you Annie Dillard. And Ekstasis/Inkwell.
Reading, writing . . . reading, writing. We are all strings that connect and make up the fabric of the aesthetic of humanity. Well done, Scott Cairns.
I read this and feel that I know nothing about poetry, or that I need to start again, both to read some poetry and to write some.