I Am?
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About this ebook
In this intriguing book John Wheatcroft, contemplating a long and brilliant career as a poet, both discusses and demonstrates the many mysteries, experiences and depth of humanity that go into making a poem.
John Wheatcroft
John Wheatcroft has published seven novels, three short story collections and eight volumes of poetry. His fiction and poetry have appeared in numerous magazines and literary journals in the U.S., Mexico, Canada, England, and Scotland, and he has also appeared in numerous anthologies. Catherine, Her Book, his novel based upon Wuthering Heights, was chosen as one of the best novels of the year by The New York Times, and he is also the author of the award-winning play, Ofoti. Mr. Wheatcroft is a WWII veteran and professor emeritus at Bucknell University. He lives in Lewisburg, PA.
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I Am? - John Wheatcroft
I AM?
by
John Wheatcroft
SMASHWORDS EDITION
******
PUBLISHED BY:
The Ossipee Press in association with The Wessex Collective
Copyright 2013 by John Wheatcroft
Cover: Odilon Redon, Germination
Smashwords Edition
This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.
*****
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
A Poem Takes Shape
was first published in The Journal of Creative Behavior, volume 4, number 2. I am much indebted to The Creative Education Foundation for granting me permission to reprint the essay as an introductory thesis to this work. • •The sonnet I know an Old Crone
was first published in the New York Times and The International Herald Tribune, then reprinted in Death of a Clown and The Fugitive Self: New and Selected Poems, by John Wheatcroft, published by Etruscan Press. •• My gratitude to David Fletcher who has read sections of the ms patiently, perceptively, penetratingly, and thoughtfully, as well as expressing doubts and offering suggestions, all of which demand time and energy and have been delivered with tact and good will. •• Especial gratitude to Andrea and John Dunton, who as a team of editors patiently spotted and corrected mistakes and errors, which are this writer’s strong points when he’s confronted face to face with an urgent and strong-minded computer. •• Also to John Murphy, Paul Susman, and Robert Sieczkiewicz for their patient and knowledgeable help in compelling my ancient and rebellious computer to serve me one last time. •• I’m also grateful to Katherine Wheatcroft for enduring my ill-humor while I was putting in the time, for her encouragement, as well her meticulous proofreading of the ms and her insistence on decent prose. Finally, to Peter Burnham, without whose editorial work this book would not be in print.
******
TABLE OF CONTENTS
A POEM TAKES SHAPE: AN ESSAY
SHAPING: A LONG POEM
SOME IMPERTINENT POEMS
SOME REFLECTIONS ON HOW DOESN’T AND HOW
DOES A POEM COME TO BE
THE MIRACLE OF DEVOLUTION
OUT OF THE MOUTH OF THE IDIOT I LIVE WITH
PARABLE OF THE TARES AND WEEDS
ARS POETICA
THE GAME
LURKING ABSTRACTIONS
GEOMETRY: PROFANE AND SACRED
AN IRREVERENT MEDITATION ON THE END OF
TIME
SOMETHING SOMEWHERE
THE ULTIMATE ABSTRACTION
IN A SIMILAR VEIN YET DIFFERENT
THE ICEMAN’S HERE
"SOME SAY IN ICE"
SPECULATING ON THE TUNDRA
FROM INSIDE
HERALDING A LIGHTNING STORM
EXPLORING A LINE BY THOMAS WOLFE
INTIMATIONS OF MORTALITY
PLATO, POETS AND ALL THE ILLS OF THE WORLD
AND HOPE
SHAVING ON AUGUST 6, 2007
CARIBBEAN SUN SETTING
A MEDITATION ON TWO PIECES OF SCULPTURE
THE END OF SELF PORTRAITURE: MATISSE,
VLAMINCK, DERAIN
IN THE TENTH CIRCLE: TWO VOICES
MEANWHILE BACK ON EARTH
THE MAN WHO HAS NO SELF
AN EPISTLE (OR MISSIVE OR MISSILE)
FROM BARTLEBY THE SCRIVENER
Appendices
A Note about John Wheatcroft
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A POEM TAKES SHAPE: AN ESSAY
PART I
No one can teach anyone else how to write a poem. This commonplace we’ve all subscribed to—ever since the teaching of creative writing was incorporated into the big business of education; and despite our most honestly professional writers’ workshops, writers’ conferences, magazines of writing. Yet some of us go on trying, not merely because it’s a way of making a living—there are more comfortable and more lucrative professions; nor even because we’re benevolently disposed toward those who want to write—the most charitable advice we can offer to many of them is, Try basket-weaving.
Perhaps one reason we try is that on occasion the scrutiny of the writing process seems to yield certain illuminations about both the process itself and the resultant product—often, ironically, from the examination of our failures—and we want to bear testimony, to promulgate the good news. I suspect that a certain Puritan economy renders some of us reluctant to let anything we engage in be wasted, even failure.
Trying means, of course, not presuming to tell anyone else how she or he should go about writing poetry—beyond such platitudes as You have to think and feel for yourself.
Nor even how he or she shouldn’t go about it—after a few obvious admonitions like, Don’t bend the sense to make the rhyme,
or Go easy on the adjectives.
Trying mostly means responding to something some one has written and then attempting to discover and pronounce reasons for its not being better— I doubt that you have a firm enough conception
—and finally parleying advice—Put it away for a while, then go back to it and you’ll know what to do with it
—sometimes even without double entendre.
Since Coleridge had made it clear that the process of organic growth provides us with a