funny how

smaller than you might think, vaster than you might imagine

smaller than you might think, vaster than you might imagine
Written by Cathoel Jorss,

I’ve been using the exact same folded square of toilet paper to blot my fountain pen every time I refill it for about three or four months now. It resembles the nosebleed of some terribly well-educated, landed, gentle person. Gentle in the old sense, I am gentle in the new. My blue blooded blotter and I carouse the seaming waves, always looking out for something that can survive the dark salt water, that can breath underwater and emerge intact and stronger, softer, something that breeds new life like a manatee mistaken by desperate sailors for a comely mermaiden.

I use this pen for prose, ideas, letters, postcards: everything except writing poetry. Poetry I find can tend to purple and bruise when handled too finely. It needs plainer tools. I write it like a shopping list, unafraid of whatsoever cravings might find their way onto the page there. I know that like tormented fruit plucked over by too many hands the cliche and banal trueism will rise to the surface, overnight like cream or over many weeks like flaws on a false politician, and I can pick it over and scour it out and glean from it that which is manifest, worth its weight in oranges, weighty but not too weighty, worthy.

All writing of poetry is worthwhile, we ought never to stop ourselves in the initial act. It’s got to be good poetry, though. It’s got to be rewritten. Real and true. You have to be able to jettison those ragged phrases that wear out their welcome in the mind, the ones you tend to mumble over on the final read-through. Poetry is more infested than perhaps any other art form with pretenders who use its name to shield their cowardice, their apathetic shouting, their lame attention-seeking, their emotional lies. Overstatement, fancy language, lack of conviction, boring ideas or endless self-description buried in ornate and impenetrable prose (yes, prose) – it’s all being displayed under the name of poetry and I think that puts a lot of people off. I think if much so-called poetry were performed under the name Songwriting – a related art we mostly tend to feel far more confident in judging – people would fold their arms and tip their heads, say, “You’ve not been playing guitar that long, have you?” Or, even worse, “I don’t believe you mean that.”

25 comments on “smaller than you might think, vaster than you might imagine”

  1. Cathoel Jorss says:
    October 25, 2014 at 7:35 pm

    To the lions! to the wolves! to the four winds, like caution!

    Reply
  2. Cathoel Jorss says:
    October 25, 2014 at 7:39 pm

    Oh, god. Yes I am so sad about him. Yes he is. Yes they/we are, one hopes.
    I met him once at a lit fest & told him I liked his poetry, “especially lately.” And then walked about smacking myself in the forehead for around half an hour. Gracious guy, but the shutters came down then – and fair enough, too!

    Reply
  3. Cathoel Jorss says:
    October 25, 2014 at 8:43 pm

    I like this new trawling thing, too, even if we’s only dragnetting a barrelload of monkeys speaking fish.

    Reply
  4. Cathoel Jorss says:
    October 25, 2014 at 8:47 pm

    *sings* But it would be nuthin, NUTHIN…

    Reply
  5. Cathoel Jorss says:
    October 25, 2014 at 8:48 pm

    Isn’t that the definition of a Freudian slip? When you say one thing, but mean your mother.

    Reply
  6. Alison Lambert says:
    October 28, 2014 at 9:00 pm

    One of the best descriptions of the poetry-writing process I’ve read. Superb, Cathoel.

    Reply
  7. Cathoel Jorss says:
    October 28, 2014 at 9:35 pm

    Thank you, Alison. I think poetry can be modest, and forthright, and pretenceless… in fact I think it has to be.

    Reply

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