On NPR this morning, there was an interview with Brian Turner, a poet who published a book of poetry about his time as an infantry soldier in Iraq. The interviewer asked him whether he was still writing about Iraq. He answered:
"I'm actually writing about what I feel is missing back here. I was trying to write poems that were in Iraq, poems that I'd started over there and were never finished, and I found they weren't working. And I realized of course I'm no longer there, so I can't write those poems."
What do you think of that? It seems to fly in the face of, for instance, Wordsworth's ideas about "emotion recollected in tranquility." Do you find that you write more about where you are (either physically or metaphorically), or about where you've been?
You can listen to the interview online -- http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=92771250
He reads a couple of the poems from the book. I especially like the second one, "What Every Soldier Should Know."
2 comments:
I find it to be just the opposite of what the guy said. I can't write about things while they're happening. There's a time of reflection that is somehow necessary. That Wordsworth kid knew a thing or two...
wordsworth told us how wordworth wrote poems. turner is showing us how he does it.
personally, i can't write a poem without it turning into a narrative, so i won't pretend to know what's going on, except to say that no one can talk about THE way to write, on the the way it works best for them.
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