I Am?

By John Wheatcroft

In this intriguing book John Wheatcroft, contemplating a long and brilliant career as a poet, both discusses and demonstrates the many mysteries, experiences and depth of humanity that go into making a poem.

• Language: English
• Publisher: The Wessex Collective
• Release date: Apr 24, 2013
• ISBN: 9781301270095

John Wheatcroft

John Wheatcroft has published seven novels, three short story collections and eight volumes of poetry. His fiction and poetry have appeared in numerous magazines and literary journals in the U.S., Mexico, Canada, England, and Scotland, and he has also appeared in numerous anthologies. Catherine, Her Book, his novel based upon Wuthering Heights, was chosen as one of the best novels of the year by The New York Times, and he is also the author of the award-winning play, Ofoti. Mr. Wheatcroft is a WWII veteran and professor emeritus at Bucknell University. He lives in Lewisburg, PA.

Book preview

I AM?

by

John Wheatcroft

SMASHWORDS EDITION

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PUBLISHED BY:

The Ossipee Press in association with The Wessex Collective

Copyright 2013 by John Wheatcroft

Cover: Odilon Redon, Germination

Smashwords Edition

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ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

A Poem Takes Shape was first published in The Journal of Creative Behavior, volume 4, number 2. I am much indebted to The Creative Education Foundation for granting me permission to reprint the essay as an introductory thesis to this work. • •The sonnet I know an Old Crone was first published in the New York Times and The International Herald Tribune, then reprinted in Death of a Clown and The Fugitive Self: New and Selected Poems, by John Wheatcroft, published by Etruscan Press. •• My gratitude to David Fletcher who has read sections of the ms patiently, perceptively, penetratingly, and thoughtfully, as well as expressing doubts and offering suggestions, all of which demand time and energy and have been delivered with tact and good will. •• Especial gratitude to Andrea and John Dunton, who as a team of editors patiently spotted and corrected mistakes and errors, which are this writer’s strong points when he’s confronted face to face with an urgent and strong-minded computer. •• Also to John Murphy, Paul Susman, and Robert Sieczkiewicz for their patient and knowledgeable help in compelling my ancient and rebellious computer to serve me one last time. •• I’m also grateful to Katherine Wheatcroft for enduring my ill-humor while I was putting in the time, for her encouragement, as well her meticulous proofreading of the ms and her insistence on decent prose. Finally, to Peter Burnham, without whose editorial work this book would not be in print.

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TABLE OF CONTENTS

A POEM TAKES SHAPE: AN ESSAY

SHAPING: A LONG POEM

SOME IMPERTINENT POEMS

SOME REFLECTIONS ON HOW DOESN’T AND HOW

DOES A POEM COME TO BE

THE MIRACLE OF DEVOLUTION

OUT OF THE MOUTH OF THE IDIOT I LIVE WITH

PARABLE OF THE TARES AND WEEDS

ARS POETICA

THE GAME

LURKING ABSTRACTIONS

GEOMETRY: PROFANE AND SACRED

AN IRREVERENT MEDITATION ON THE END OF

TIME

SOMETHING SOMEWHERE

THE ULTIMATE ABSTRACTION

IN A SIMILAR VEIN YET DIFFERENT

THE ICEMAN’S HERE

"SOME SAY IN ICE"

SPECULATING ON THE TUNDRA

FROM INSIDE

HERALDING A LIGHTNING STORM

EXPLORING A LINE BY THOMAS WOLFE

INTIMATIONS OF MORTALITY

PLATO, POETS AND ALL THE ILLS OF THE WORLD

AND HOPE

SHAVING ON AUGUST 6, 2007

CARIBBEAN SUN SETTING

A MEDITATION ON TWO PIECES OF SCULPTURE

THE END OF SELF PORTRAITURE: MATISSE,

VLAMINCK, DERAIN

IN THE TENTH CIRCLE: TWO VOICES

MEANWHILE BACK ON EARTH

THE MAN WHO HAS NO SELF

AN EPISTLE (OR MISSIVE OR MISSILE)

FROM BARTLEBY THE SCRIVENER

Appendices

A Note about John Wheatcroft

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A POEM TAKES SHAPE: AN ESSAY

PART I

No one can teach anyone else how to write a poem. This commonplace we’ve all subscribed to—ever since the teaching of creative writing was incorporated into the big business of education; and despite our most honestly professional writers’ workshops, writers’ conferences, magazines of writing. Yet some of us go on trying, not merely because it’s a way of making a living—there are more comfortable and more lucrative professions; nor even because we’re benevolently disposed toward those who want to write—the most charitable advice we can offer to many of them is, Try basket-weaving. Perhaps one reason we try is that on occasion the scrutiny of the writing process seems to yield certain illuminations about both the process itself and the resultant product—often, ironically, from the examination of our failures—and we want to bear testimony, to promulgate the good news. I suspect that a certain Puritan economy renders some of us reluctant to let anything we engage in be wasted, even failure.

Trying means, of course, not presuming to tell anyone else how she or he should go about writing poetry—beyond such platitudes as You have to think and feel for yourself. Nor even how he or she shouldn’t go about it—after a few obvious admonitions like, Don’t bend the sense to make the rhyme, or Go easy on the adjectives. Trying mostly means responding to something some one has written and then attempting to discover and pronounce reasons for its not being better— I doubt that you have a firm enough conception—and finally parleying advice—Put it away for a while, then go back to it and you’ll know what to do with it—sometimes even without double entendre.

Since Coleridge had made it clear that the process of organic growth provides us with a