I'm already having a hard time sitting down to do these posts. I promised an update on Sunday. It is now noon on Tuesday. This is what I have always feared about these blogs -- the relentless pressure to keep to a schedule while trying to be creative.
I learned writing from journalism training and poetry. My work on newspapers serves me well here since we were trained to put our rear end in the chair and start typing. Edit it later. As a matter of fact, I tended to edit it with a very sharp blade in layout once I saw what it looked like on the page. Once a lifestyle editor, forever a lifestyle editor.
Poetry is a practice somewhat like brewing tea and on the other hand like suffering from a fever. It has the same quality as revelation -- an inability to turn away while knowing that a watched poem never peaks. For many decades now, my soul has not been tortured (in that sophomoric and euphoric manner common to college girls) that makes poetry flow. I pour that urge into my preaching and my teaching and blue moon chatting. As I write that last sentence I see that what worries me about a blog, a poem, a published article is the permanence. Permanence is an unnatural force and a fiction.
I learned writing from journalism training and poetry. My work on newspapers serves me well here since we were trained to put our rear end in the chair and start typing. Edit it later. As a matter of fact, I tended to edit it with a very sharp blade in layout once I saw what it looked like on the page. Once a lifestyle editor, forever a lifestyle editor.
Poetry is a practice somewhat like brewing tea and on the other hand like suffering from a fever. It has the same quality as revelation -- an inability to turn away while knowing that a watched poem never peaks. For many decades now, my soul has not been tortured (in that sophomoric and euphoric manner common to college girls) that makes poetry flow. I pour that urge into my preaching and my teaching and blue moon chatting. As I write that last sentence I see that what worries me about a blog, a poem, a published article is the permanence. Permanence is an unnatural force and a fiction.
It is (to describe it figuratively) as if an author were to make a slip of the pen, and as if this clerical error became conscious of being such. Perhaps this was no error but in a far higher sense was an essential part of the whole exposition. It is, then, as if this clerical error were to revolt against the author, out of hatred for him, were to forbid him to correct it, and were to say, "No, I will not be erased, I will stand as a witness against thee, that thou art a very poor writer."
Søren Kierkegaard
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