1169: from "American Analects" by Gary Young
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1169: from "American Analects" by Gary Young
Transcript
I’m Major Jackson, and this is The Slowdown.
Is it offensive if I announce that I am not a fan of the question What’s your creative process? Like many writers, I am asked this often after public readings. The question presumes that there is only one door into language, into the imagination. Plus, I always think the person pictures me leaning over a candle or burning incense, after having sharpened my special pencils.
And yet, I understand the curiosity behind the question. I want to say that my creative process is, occasionally, “uncreative.” It’s strange how some days, I sit at my desk and find writing a poem to be an easeful journey — not quite a walk in the park, but something close, maybe a jog on a beach beside crashing waves.
Then, there are days, I sit in front of the computer like a stone, pleading with the great cosmic figure in the sky to give me something, an image, a phrase, half a metaphor, anything.
Sitting through that silence is probably the greatest challenge. That space holds all the insecurities and frustrations of creating. And yet, I treasure the meditative quiet and the long hours of just . . . thinking. The rewards of going deep into myself is a greater knowing, most of which is probably beneficial only to me.
I find that poems emerge out of dialogues that I have either with myself, other works of art, or my friends. In this way, my poems are a collaboration of silences.
Today’s poem spotlights how writing can record false starts and difficult beginnings, but always, in the end, is emblematic of how we push language to say who we are beyond our physical being.
from “American Analects”
by Gary Young
Gene once confessed that when he was younger, he’d had a terrible temper, and often flew into a rage. I couldn’t imagine it; I had never seen him the least bit angry. Gene said, after my wife died, my anger left me. He said, she hadn’t been the source of my anger, but when she was gone, anger was one of many things that died in me. Each night, an owl cries out from the redwoods. He calls, and I call back. I call, and he answers. We share the same bright moon, the same shadows, and the same fate. The possibility of discussion is limitless; we have no secrets. This morning I discovered an owl pellet by the front door — a wad of fur, and a jumble of femurs and little ribs — oracle bones, easy to decipher. Yesterday we sat on the bank of the Kamo River, laughing and drinking beer. Today, that very spot collapsed into swollen floodwaters. In the temples, there is so much talk about emptiness, and the ground of being. The void in the riverbank is large enough to hold us all. For Gene, the authority of mark-making was a comfort. He said, it’s exhilarating to be available to your own inquiry, to create your own map, to say, this is me. It’s of no use to the others, and it can’t be explained. That’s its value.
from "American Analects” by Gary Young from AMERICAN ANALECTS © 2024 Gary Young. Used by permission of Persea Books.