sw00437a-con.versingwithmyself

[ Updated 2007-09-24 ]

Autobio       The Yeats-Auden-Saenz-Mackey Connections


 Last night I got to reflecting:  I am somewhat of an oddball poet,
 a strange poet.  And so I did searches on both.  Under the first
 I found and read an interview of two translators of works by a
 reclusive nocturnal oddball poet who lived out his life in La Paz,
 Bolivia.  His name is Jaime Saenz.  Though not as he was, going 
 back to even before my 27 years working as a motel/hotel night 
 auditor I was a creature of night.  My reclusiveness applies more
 to my inner life than to my day-to-day life, but I have become
 more reclusive in my day-to-day life since my health forced me
 into an early retirement, a circumstance I did not expect and was  
 not planning toward.  There is a chance I may become less of a 
 recluse.  The oddball in me relates to my approach to writing as
 well as to my personality, though I believe the latter is the force
 beneath and within my views of and consequent expressions of
 whoever it is I am.  Unless some other can gather a sense of me
 more clearly than I am able to, I contend I am a chameleon: one
 who does not have a locatable style.  Why?  Because my sub-
 conscious, my hidden brain, my below-ground brain is an ocean
 of possibilities, an ocean which is constantly changed.  And it is
 from what that ocean does with what changes it that I so often
 am motivated.  Rarely am I able to tell in advance what next will
 rise from it.  It has been my way to go with what is presented to
 my conscious brain, however it is structured.  Doing so is filled
 with risks, but I am possessed by a risk-taking personality.  Yes,
 I have made significant errors because of it, but I have also made
 signal advances because of it.  Should I be more rational?  Sure.
 I have at times.
 -
 So where does Yeats fit into this?  Centrally in his belief that we
 who do such making/ make poetry out of our arguments with 
 ourselves.  I definitely do this, and not just in poems I make.
 And where does Auden enter?  Centrally in his:  "How can I
 know what I think until I see what I say" idea.  And Nathaniel
 Mackey?  Two things--both ofwhich I learned from an online
 interview of him by Christopher Funkhouser:  1) his interest in
 math and science during his early years  /  2) his belief writing
 is rooted in the author, and that therefore an author must take
 the risk of not appealing to anyone, must have the faith writings
 of his (of hers) will find their ways to appreciative audiences.

 -

 Here are two sites to see.  If you go to the first one, scroll
 to the bottom of the page and read the information there, 
 and heed it.
 -
 
 (this is the interview about Jaime Saenz)
   -
 
(this is the Funkhouser Mackey interview)


 -

 footnote: recently one of my siblings told me I--when I was
 yet quite young--used to get up on top of the kitchen table
 and attempt to carry on a debate with my dad.  My dad
 would then eat a little faster and go outside.  My sibling,
 meanwhile, would sneak some of the food on my plate. 
 -     



Brian A. J. Salchert