Quotes from the Eigner letter

I posted a link to a letter from Larry Eigner that is posted at Buffalo: http://wings.buffalo.edu/epc/ezines/passages/passages5/forster.html

And here I'm going to post some quotes that I particularly like:

"Ah well, maybe writing (and of course rding) does abt as much (or little) as anything else in this complicated --multiplex--world of ours" [in the margins]

We live in a multiplex world. Yes.

"Well, what's kind of old to the writer may be new enough to the reader, so you can't much tell what and how much not to show other poeple."

"You can want something or try to do something too much or too little, and the question how much is enough there's never much of an answer to, but enough at times, and anyway the question is alwys there, is maybe useful, one way or another, if not, anyhow, something in itself."

"9-10 yrs after the freon gas [Eigner had cryosurgery to aide with taming a "wild" left arm and leg; he had cerebral palsy froma forceps injury at birth] my desire to write long pieces dimmed enough so I got willing enough to end a poem at any point, any word, I think that that's how the poems get clearer, while before they were Obscure much of the time."

It's so interesting that physical capabilities would effect the growth of a writer. There's the daily practice, the daily reading, writing or thinking about the work but then to add this element of physical capabilities, or lack thereof, forcing a path to better veracity while producing the poem...

"everything not wholly repititious or derivitave seems within the human ear or eye's spectrum...you don't want to have too few pitches or colors or keys..."

my caps coming up here "IMMEDIACY AND FORCE HAVE TO TAKE PRECENDENCE OVER CLARITY IN A POEM"

Eigner writes of how he would memorize poems he heard and then retype them, just like he would memorize lessons at school because school was a vacation compared to the excruciating physiotherapy.

"the poem does become a thought process or arc or courseof thought or trace or artifact of the same, maybe more than a machine made of words"

--that's all for now...more later...---