sw00315o-the10questions

Opinion


 My Answers to 
 The Ten Questions at Very Like a Whale because I have
 decided to accept the indirect invitation from the master
 of that blog to "have a go at" his questions.  


 1.  In his response to Shelley, W. H. Auden said that
      if poets were allowed to be acknowledged legislators
      they would create a society no one could live in.  I
      find this challenging, but I sense he is right.  I do have
      a stance though, not that I always adhere to it, either
      in my poem-making or in my life.  I believe we ought
      to strive to spiritually love each other, including those
      we place among our enemies.  It is a belief which 
      comes directly from Jesus, and is implicit in the prayer
      to the Father He taught his disciples.  Flowing from this
      belief are the last ten lines of one of my poems:
               And yet, and yet,
               not wealth nor fame nor power--
               you know:
               Uncounted simple ones of us
               have grown & given,
               and more and more
               made radiance
               their progeny,
               and selflessness,
               and courage.

  2.  I have never participated in an online workshop; but
       I was in a workshop as an undergraduate, then as a
       graduate, and then approximately twenty years later
       as a post-graduate.  Each of those benefitted me,
       especially the graduate workshop.

  3.  As to Donald Hall's statement, there are too many
       variables.  Another position I learned through Auden
       is Valéry's astute conclusion: "a poem is never finished,
       it is only abandoned"; further, I, like Yeats, am willing
       to revise so long as I am enough alive to be able to do
       so.  Still, some poems arrive from one's secret brain in
       pristine condition, while others gestate for years, and 
       others are so messy there seems no way to salvage
       them. 

  4.  Wrong, but I will say this:  I have self-published all my
       books except the first one.  That first one came out
       in November of 1972 just as my academic life was
       about to end.  I asked six or so of my colleagues to
       pick a poem from that book which s/he liked best,
       and no poem received more than one vote.  I am too
       eclectic, and the Universe knows it.  Its Muse, there-
       fore, is likely to charge in with any thing; and if to me
       that any thing has enough going for it, I am likely to
       record it and pass it on.  The other day at a site
       devoted to S. T. Coleridge, I encountered and read
       a mathematical poem he had written.  Did it amaze
       me he had done such?  Yes it did, but I was pleased
       to have become acquainted with it. 

  5.  Yes I have an Internet presence, but the search engine
       robots know more about it than humans do.  Over the
       last seven years (the age of my online life) I have had
       to abort several of my online projects.  The one I now
       maintain began its life 11-03-06 in AOL's journals
       space.  My name for it is: Sprintedon Hollow.  It is
       majorly poems I have written.  I am 66.
       -
       The state of online poetry is beyond comprehension.
       That it is there is enough for me.  I am constantly
       learning through it, and finding variant joys through it. 

  6.  I have been published minorly, and that because I 
       am not aggressive in that manner.  I am an INFP.
       My development as a poet is ongoing, and other
       than through the workshops I mentioned, most
       of that development proceeds through the reading
       I do and through deepening my understanding of
       my wacky self.  Recently I wrote that all my poems
       ought to be read by an English butler.  I am three
       parts German and one part English, but the English
       part hath my wit.

  7.  They are there, and now and again I visit one, but
       I do not submit to any.  There was, however, last
       time I checked, a sonnet of mine at Sonnet Central.

  8.  I favor it.  I prefer being the sole arbiter of what I
       create.  Just before 1980 I began Thinking Lizard
       (my still viable publishing company) and in 1980 
       I published several of my books in the cassette
       medium and registered them through the LOC.

  9.  The biggest opportunity?  Communion with an other
       Earth-alive human through a made object which
       enables that other to live with more hope and more
       faith and more love.  Communion with myself to 
       the same end.

 10.  The biggest challenge?  Not letting my life wend on,
        nowhere going, nowhere gone.  It is easy to give up,
        but to paraphrase loosely what President Coolidge
        once said:  Persistence is/ more valuable than is
        talent or genius.  I opt to persist until I can persist
                                no longer.  Thank you.





Brian A. J. Salchert