…a quote from Robert Kroetsch.

So, I haven’t written much lately. Not on the blog, not on my poetry, although I’ll admit to having written about 300 emails in the past few days; however, it’s not for the lack of thinking about it–though I’ll admit I didn’t try too hard either. Tonight I had a moment of exhuberance, the urge to write a blog post after reading a thoughtful post on Brenda Schmidt’s blog about the long poem/short poem from a SWG session this fall. Funny thing is, after reading Brenda’s post I was certain I had written down exactly what Kroetsch had said, but after re-reading my notes, I wasn’t so sure anymore. It wasn’t until I had re-read the notes, and began to write this post about what I thought I knew that it began to click. In my notes I wrote: “failure of the long poem—not like this” (and I underlined “like this”). And tonight it really registered, how I thought I knew at the time what he was saying, and I wrote what I knew, thinking then that I knew what he meant, but in the end, it was/is impossible, because I don’t have it. And that’s what he was saying. The moment we have it is the moment it slips away, and we fail. But, I’m comforted by the simple fact that we “dare to fall off the page.” And that keeps us going.