On Writing

A writer is not a writer because he has written some books. A writer is not a writer because he teaches literature. A writer is only a writer if he can write now, tonight, this minute.

All of which is to say, I didn’t pay a hell of a lot of attention to grammar, and when I write it is for the love of the word, the color, like tossing paint on a canvas, and using a lot of ear and having read a bit here and there, I generally come out ok, but technically I don’t know what’s happening, nor do I care.

Endurance is more important than truth because without endurance there can't be any truth. And truth means going to the end like you mean it. That way, death itself comes up short when it grabs

I have no definite talent or trade, and how I stay alive is largely a matter of magic.

But it’s only when a man gets to the point of a gun in his mouth that he can see the whole world inside of his head. Anything else is conjecture, conjecture and bullshit and pamphlets.

There is nothing more magic and beautiful than lines forming across paper. It's all there is. It's all there ever was.

Yes, I know what you mean about writing and writers. We seem to have lost the target. Writers seem to write to be known as writers. They don’t write because something is driving them toward the edge. I look back at when Pound, T. S. Eliot, e. e. Cummings, Jeffers, Auden, Spender were about. Their work cracked right through the paper, set it on fire. Poems became events, explosions. There was a high excitement. Now, for decades there has seemed to be this lull, almost a practiced lull, as if dullness indicated genius. And if a new talent came along it was only a flash, a few poems, a thin book and then he or she was sanded down, ingested into the quiet nothingness. Talent without durability is a god damned crime. It means they went to the soft trap, it means they believed the praise, it means they settled short. A writer is not a writer because he has written some books. A writer is not a writer because he teaches literature. A writer is only a writer if he can write now, tonight, this minute. We have too many x-writers who type. Books fall from my hand to the floor. They are total crap. I think we have just blown away half a century to the stinking winds. Yes,

Chopin’s bones are dead and they are shooting from the housetops and I sit in a dirty noisy kitchen in hell writing to Henry Miller.

how to do it” will never create an Art, it will never shake the old skin, it will never get us out of here.

Well, I’m 34 now. If I don’t make it by the time I’m 60, I’m just going to give myself 10 more years.

Sometimes we can become too holy and therefore, caged.

there’s music in everything, even defeat—but

The thing that I fear discriminating against is humor and truth.

There is no other way, and there never was.

Privately now, I would like to comment to you on the Noble Bitch in Trace 32. Why this eltchl, this conservative from the halls of the ikons and holy rollers, the pluckers of rondeaux and smellers of lilies, why this spalpeen should set himself up as a special critic of literary know-how is more than I can dispense with with a quodlibet. I need a stronger antiseptic.

There we were, a shipping clerk and a janitor discussing theories in aesthetics while all about us men drawing 10 times our salaries were lost out on the limb reaching for rotten fruit. What does this say for the American way of life?

Because you’re not accepted doesn’t necessarily mean you’re a genius. Maybe you just write badly.

I believe that whatever is necessary is necessary, it is up to you. unfortunately or fortunately I feel my power more and more each passing day, each passing year, of course, there are minor lulls wherein I sincerely think of murdering myself and come very close, especially with hangover. however, this is probably common with most of us.—oh, it was BRAHMS!—damn, I didn’t know he wrote such lousy piano stuff.

Classes? Classes are for asses.

byłem przeciwnikiem wojen dawno temu, w czasach gdy nie było to popularne ani modne...