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.