Moonlight Musings

Which is your greatest love – poetry or prose?

I was going to ask, 'Which is your first love?' But then I realised, the first love is not necessarily the greatest. So I changed it to, 'Which is your true love?' But then I bethought me, all loves are true ... though not necessarily equal.  Then again, they could be equal, so perhaps I should be asking: 'poetry or prose – or both?'

Need I explain, to this audience, that I mean 'Which has your heart as a writer?' (not as a reader)?

When I was younger, and learned that various wonderful novelists had been poets first, I used to smile smugly to myself. Of course they were! Fiction was what they had to do to earn a living by writing, that's all. Not that the fictions weren't brilliant and beautiful, not that they didn't nourish me – but still, it was obvious to me that poetry is really where it's at. After all, I started writing mine when I was seven. I knew in my soul that it was the ultimate gift from God.

Then Australian writer Carmel Bird (whom I knew when were children in Tasmania and again some decades later as rising literary figures in Melbourne) expressed some frustration with me for only writing poems.

'If you can write poetry like that,' she said, 'think what you could do with fiction!'

It took me aback. I already knew that she could write excellent poetry, though she didn't do it very often. And I enjoyed her fiction enormously, partly because of her beautiful and very individual writing style (I recently told her that her prose is poetry) and partly because it was often set where we had both grown up. But it was a revelation to realise, from that exasperated utterance, that she gave fiction priority!

Later I made what was to become a very long and close friendship with a young poet called Helen Patrice. She writes wonderful poems. I envy her talent! And she values poetry. (She's very good at articles and memoir too.) But it has become clear to me – because she often tells me so – that fiction is both her first and greatest love. Not that she has to choose; in fact she might come close to saying 'both' in answer to my question, and is surely not about to stop doing either. Still, I now know that fiction has first place in her heart. It has finally dawned on me that this is a real possibility for many writers. We are not all alike. Just because poetry is MY greatest love....

Carmel was wrong about me. The gift of poetry does not mean I can also write fiction. I am actually pretty hopeless at it! Believe me, I have tried. I do love to read fiction, and have broad, eclectic tastes – from Henry James and George Eliot to Blair Babylon's erotic romances, and everything in between. I do know what things make for good fiction. Both as an editor and a teacher of creative writing, I have to know, so as to steer people aright. It's just that I can't do it myself. 

I can write prose. I know these weekly articles work; people keep telling me so. And I know how they work; after all, I am the one crafting them. (They don't just spill out, higgledy-piggledy.) I even had a couple of short stories published in obscure anthologies a long time ago. But they weren't fiction; they were disguised autobiography, and the writing was kinda 'experimental'. I have twice attempted novels. The first time, I got bored with it pretty quickly, and had enough sense to realise that if it was boring its author it was unlikely to enthral readers. The second was my only NaNoWriMo experience. It was fun to do that, just once, and I did finish it. The trouble is, it's really bad – you can trust me on this; it is not an isolated opinion – and I have no incentive to try and improve it. (But you should see the painstaking patience I have for every detail of a poem.)

People have been asking me for years to write my memoirs, and I have tried. But I'm not thrilled with the way that writing turns out either – and besides, I experience it as a chore. I finally decided I don't have to do that, no matter how much people might want me to. What a relief! What liberation! And I guess that's the crux of it. I just don't want to write stories, whether lived or imagined. Poetry is my passion, my true love, which 'age cannot wither ... nor custom stale'. (It may even include stories sometimes, whether lived or imagined). And I am happy enough to write articles about poetry, too. When I am not with the beloved, it is a pleasure to at least discuss the beloved.

My late friend Philip Martin was like me, as this poem (from his A Flag for the Wind) attests:

Muse

For a whole year
Nothing. You don't come near.
Verse drags its feet, stumbles.

Try prose then, start a novel.
Take out someone else. 
Maybe I'll 'learn to care'.

All at once you return,
And the words dance again
To rhythms not my own.

Ah my true love,
You must have known!
Prose would have been a mere
Casual affair.


Nevertheless I was excited, like the rest of our Poets United team, when Magaly came on board with a monthly Prose Pantry. I knew what poem I would like to retell as a story. I thought I could do it. I thought I'd enjoy it.
Nope! I still have my old problem. My tale dragged on boringly, with no real spark of life – though the poem I was basing it on was full of spark and sparkle. I know what kinds of things might bring it to life; I just find that, when it comes to the crunch, I can't write it that way.

Well, never mind, it's not a major tragedy. I get to do what I love, and not what I don't love. One of the things I love is reading stories which other people have written, so I am in for lots of yummy monthly treats, thanks to all of you who do cook up goodies for the Prose Pantry. Bring it on!

Only it has made me curious. I already know that Magaly, magical poet as she is, loves story-telling even more. We've been discussing all this behind the scenes (and perhaps she will expound further here). What about the rest of you? I am fascinated to know if you fell in love with poetry first, or with story-telling? And did you stay faithful or move from one to the other? Perhaps you share your affections with both? (Is that exacting? Do they get jealous and demanding, and fight for your attention? Or are they content to share, gracefully taking turns?)

Come on – tell me your stories of your relationships with your Muses, do!

Material shared in ‘Moonlight Musings’ is presented for study and review. Poems, photos and other writings remain the property of the copyright owners, usually their authors.

I Wish I'd Written This

Going to Meet Her Lover

By Philip Martin (1931-2005)

It sings. Everything,
Sun, wind, these pavements,
This old wall protesting
Every woman
Has the right to choose.
I've chosen you
For life, my body sings
Its forty years and I'm
Nineteen, and a man passing
Shows it with his eyes.
In five minutes you'll clasp me,
Claim me. These loose clothes
I wear because you like them
Stream on the wind.

From New and Selected Poems. (Melbourne, Longman Cheshire, 1978.)

I think it's remarkable that Philip, a heterosexual man, could so well imagine himself into the head of the woman speaker of the poem. I, who am a woman, would like to have written so beautifully and authentically of this experience.

I knew of Philip's work, and admired it, long before I met him in person. Eventually we worked together in the Melbourne Branch of the Poets Union of Australia, and in the publishing cooperative Pariah Press. We became great mates, and it was a shock to learn of his death.

I have recounted a little of our friendship at my SnakyPoet blog, where I have also posted a eulogy by his partner Jenny Gribble, which tells a great deal more about him. You can find other links there too, to what other online material exists. A few of his books are on Amazon and at Abe Books. But there are other Philip Martins, so check the list of his books in the Wikipedia entry (at the link on his name, above).

Unfortunately some online poems by a Philip Martin are (to anyone who knows his writing) obviously by one of the others, and do not compare. So I'd better give you something else here and now.

Port Fairy

Here nothing stands between you and the wind.
Wind and sea. For twenty years I've come
Back here from cities that I love. Tonight
In Seacombe House again, I hear the gusts
Beat at the walls, and the sea's loud. Both call me
Out to walk. The pines in Sackville Street
Vie with the roar from the East Beach, the South Beach.
Behind me the ancient ship lies in its dunes.
I face into the south, the solid dark
Beyond the last street lights: imagine the first
Light struck here by European hands
To glimmer in a window, solitary
Across the blackness of new land, old land:
Small, impertinent, almost swallowed up.

                                 ***

'It is good also to be poor, and listen to the wind.' *
Ten winters back, weak from the flu, I came here
With a line from a poem echoing inside me.
Upstairs in this old house I saw the streets
Shining black with rain. No one about.
Switched off the radio, wanting not even Mozart:
'It is good also to be poor.'  Voluptuous
Austerity. No human sounds. I listened:
Unbroken roar from the East Beach. Then, closer,
More intimate, new rain against my window.
And lay down, sure of healing. Sleep, wind, sea.

*From Robert Bly's 'Poem against the British'.

(Port Fairy is a coastal town south-west of Melbourne. The book cover shown above uses a photo, by Avis Quarrell, of the Port Fairy lighthouse.)

Poems and photos used in ‘I Wish I’d Written This’ remain the property of the copyright holders (usually their authors).