David Epstein : part seven

When you require renewal, is there a particular poem or book that you return to? A particular author?  

First of all, for a number of years, I’ve been writing in the middle of the night. Every night. You can read more about this here:  https://mysmallpresswritingday.blogspot.com/2020/02/david-epstein-in-closing-let-me-just-say.html. It’s mentally free space.  I rarely stagnate, rarely “require” renewal.  This is work, and I take it seriously. My writing partner calls me a fire hose.  I might write clunkers, what Lee and I call “dotp”s, for “dead on the page,” but I will keep on writing, using the tools. And I’ve also learned that, if in the context of a given week or month, life intercedes and less comes, it’s usually because a subconscious rearrangement is going on.  Counsel patience.  If I do find myself stagnating, I don’t rely on an author: I rely on forms. They’re kind of the jigsaw puzzles for the rainy day of poetry production. I’ll run to ballad measure, to Petrarchan sonnets, and to my own version of that, the Fifteener, which is a Petrarchan with an extra line, the septet end-rhymes most often going down as c,d,c,d,e,d,e.  And the more I work with slant-rhyme, the more satisfying I find it.  To the point where a dead-on end-rhyme feels like nested bowls: it’s hard to get them apart sometimes; whereas skewed end rhymes are like puns: they can be good or bad, but it’s the reader who takes delight in them, by apprehending the skew, completing a deliberate distortion. So, renewal, for me, inheres in getting back to the delight in language.  The rest follows.