The discovery of the inner world

Read a Bob Hass essay ('Twentieth Century Pleasures', Harper Collins NY, 1997) about James Wright. He went into great detail about Wright's work on the self and his empathy with 'outsider' characters. Which was all very interesting. He also talked about a poem called 'The Undermining of the Defense Economy' which was a really lovely poem that as Bob described it

He tries to see what can be made to happen by saying beautiful things, by repeating his talismanic nouns and adjectives of the the discovery of the inner world.

So of course that sounded like a great exercise to do what Damien suggested when he read a metaphor I wrote a while ago and said - do more of those! Not sure if the poem is working, because I went for the brutal metaphor I think, the talismanic voodoo side of what Wright was doing, trying to make it fit into the Bill Nelson series. But it seems those kind of beautiful metaphors don't really work. I like the idea of relentless metaphor and adjectives though, it did make for a really interesting poem. So I will work on that one and try and bring it into line.

Other than that. I haven't written anything else this week.

James' workshop was interesting in that it highlighted the struggle with originality I think. He seems to be trying to do so many things in a fresh way he is struggling to progress and focus on one thing. I feel his pain.