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In which the poets voice their individual opinions.

During my brief but memorable and productive sojourn at Soaring Gardens (courtesy of the Ora Lerman Foundation, thank you) I had the amazing good fortune of stumbling upon and subsequently reading, cover to cover, practically in one sitting, the correspondence of Vladimir Nabokov and Edmund Wilson. For thirty years or so these literary largenesses carried on a passionate, vivid, funny, and extremely specific conversation about literature, politics, daily life AND poetics.

“Bunny” and “Volodya” have a lot to say to one another. “Bunny” is thoroughly American, and like so many of his generation, in love with the promise of communism. He is endlessly optimistic about the Soviet experiment. Focused on the social and class context of literary works, he praises Dos Passos and Faulkner and Jane Austen and tries mightily to persuade “Volodya” to see things his way. “Volodya” will have none of it. A liberal minded white Russian, he has no illusions about the violence of the Russian Revolution, a violence that he sees present from before the get-go. When Bunny waxes enthusiastically that Russiais now full of poets declaiming in public places, suggesting that this is a happy outcome of the revolution, Volodya points out that this declaiming of poetry had been going on for a long time. It’s Russian tradition, he maintains, not a Soviet innovation.

And so it goes for years. These two men, in a very private conversation, discuss literary and political matters of great consequence. They are friends; they share a lot in their conversations, much of it about versification. Bunny was studying Russian (late in life he took up Hungarian) and was fascinated by Russian versification. How do you do an iamb in Russian? What does an iamb mean in English? How do all those long “ion” words in English affect the way a poet can write a line? Those questions get huge amounts of attention and all in extremely specific terms—these two guys are looking at the details of words and lines. They don’t generalize much and when they do, one or the other gets annoyed.

Eventually their differences over versification—and politics—cause a breach in the friendship and a break in communication. Happily, they reconnect before Bunny’s death.

But during the years of intense communication, the reader sees just how deep the friendship is in spite of profound disagreements. Bunny recommends Volodya for writing jobs, teaches him how to manage editors, negotiates proper payment for Volodya and secures them joint projects that don’t necessarily work out. They comment, sometimes brutally, on one another’s work. Bunny doesn’t like Lolita, for example. He says so quite bluntly. Volodya is dismayed by Bunny’s introduction to Chekhov stories, in which the American critic focuses on the class relations in the stories, rather than on Chekhov’s literary mastery. For his part, Volodya very patiently helps Bunny with Russian and supports him as wives change and babies are born.

These are private letters by public figures. Their quarrels are passionate and urgent and between them. The writing is clear and lucid and not polemical, though politics and culture shape identities and values.

Flash forward. Forced to return to the world, 2013, because of a burned out well pump that meant no water, I find more comments about Mark Edmundson’s complaint about contemporary poetry, recently published in Harpers. Today in the Boston Review I find an article denouncing “conceptualism” in poetry and advocating a return to “affect.” (I didn’t know it had gone, but that’s a complicated matter for another time.) Many comments follow Stephen Burt’s rebuttal to Edmundson, and responses to the anti-conceptualism piece are pouring in to the Boston Review. Some people are really angry one way or the other.

In both of these cases it seems to me that the writers have created straw man arguments, kerfuffles for the sake of—well—kerfuffle, made public so that there can be some trumped-up firestorm of public debate.

It leaves me wondering what these people would say in private. Would they write letters to a close literary friend about the subjects of these kerfuffles? Do the subjects really matter to them? Do these people care deeply about what they are saying? Does it occupy them at breakfast? Would they spend 30 years debating the questions? Would they really?

A studio at Soaring Gardens

It’s a mystery to me how poems come into being. I look at poems I’ve written, especially those that have been published, and I am dumbstruck. “How did this happen?” I think. “How can I possibly do this again?” I don’t know.

I do know that poems, for me, have been hard won. I know a poet who once said to me “writing is the thing I hate the most that I love the best.” I know what she means. For years my writing came in brief spurts, followed by long periods of daily (and dull) writing and patient gathering of material. Then would come urgent composition. Preparation was everything. The poems themselves came only after long intervals.

During the last year I have written over a hundred poems. They have come quickly and without gathering or scribbling. Not all of these texts are worth anything, but some are poems I’m glad I wrote. There is new satisfaction in watching the pile of drafted poems grow. Since craft is pure pleasure, the task of taming these rough beasts is thrilling and satisfying.

So now the question –what has made this possible – beyond my own frustration at the preciousness and scarcity of my production? And am I any closer to understanding the sources of my own work?

Enter “The Grind.” Created by one Ross White, “The Grind” is a group of dedicated writers who, on a monthly basis commit to writing each day. There is no judgment, no commentary; no opinions are ventured. The un-workshop. Grinders are placed into what I call “pods” with a small group of other podsters who are working in a similar genre or in no genre whatever (“Manic Mix.”) The writers are from all over the country (foreign lands, too) and of every age and ilk.

The deal is simple: you write each day and before midnight in whatever time zone you happen to fall, you e-mail your work to the pod. End of story. At the end of the month everybody thanks everybody and either you sign on for another month or you take a month off. You can’t join unless you’ve been recommended by a successful grinder and if you’ve completed one successful month you can take a break one night a week. Simple.

So why does it work? To answer this question I introduce the great psychoanalyst of play, D.W Winnicott, who makes some simple observations about the capacity to be alone. He says that we develop that capacity by “playing in the presence of others.” The trick about these “others” is that they must be “noninterfering.” In human psychological life that “other” is usually the mother. But it doesn’t have to be. So, there it is. Writing is, of course, a form of play (nothing more serious and less solemn than play.) It’s a form of play that demands the capacity to be alone, and a form of play that requires an internalized audience to grant permission. After all since “poetry makes nothing happen,” we need all the permission we can get. Winnicott also distinguishes between “play” and “game.” The latter is done for reward. the former for its own sake. Play is a non-competitive activity. We can leave, thank God, the contests at the door.

The funny thing is that for years I’ve been teaching writing as improvisation using these principles. My students play in my presence. I observe but don’t interfere. I’ve been told that what surprises people are that my classes are so non-competitive. I’ve gotten good at the Winnicottian paradigm. I can create playgrounds for others.

What I couldn’t do was create the playground for myself. That playground– Winnicott calls it “potential space” — is what the grind has given me.

I took September off. Signup will take place in the next two days. I still have no idea where poems come from. But I trust that if I enter the place of play, I will find what I need.