Struggling in the Margins

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Abstract

of so disciplining myself was neither the question, nor the uptake from the answer). I am, at the moment, reading Paul Auster, Roland Barthes, Pablo Neruda, Hans-Georg Gadamer and Bernard Cornwell, not to mention the hundreds of writers I read on Medium. Not one of the books I reading reach for same thing as the others. Not one of these authors takes the same historical point of departure. Though all of them were working in the 20th Century, that and the fact they are male (which is entirely coincidental; two days ago I finished The Penelopiad by Atwood), is where the similarity ends.But this is where, too, I have to confess that not only my writing is compulsive, but my reading is as well. It’s almost just the sheer joy of having a book in my hand is enough reason for me to pick one up. That’s not entirely the case. Only last year I realized that I had limited time for reading books that I didn’t enjoy (cue Midnight’s Children; why did no one tell Rushdie it was about 150 to 200 pages too long?).I don’t know that I have any interest in creating anything like a grand narrative of life, or even of myself. I have, though, begun to think of my work as pieces of a greater whole. It seems to me, while I write things that concern (more or less) diverse subjects, experience, both of something and the experience of writing itself, keep driving me. But, much as the epoch is a bracketed section removed from a (not-neces

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sarily linear) history, each piece is a fragment of a total experience: that is, my life. That’s certainly not to claim that I am writing to share with you my personal experiences. I write about plenty of things about which I do not know.However, I feel like the execution of a piece represents, at bare minimum, the experience of at least one instant in time: the time I am writing. This is continuous, obviously, and the beauty of it is that there’s always something to say. Yes, sometimes I get obtuse; the philosopher in me loves grappling with abstract concepts, but, not, I hope, to simply pile more abstractions on top of it. I still believe that the poem itself, as much as it is made out of concrete words, relies on the concrete images/connections to drive them.As I am sure is the case with (many, all) of you, writing itself is a deeply pleasurable experience, one that I am not prepared to let go of any time soon. It may not be true, anymore, to say that I am “struggling” in the margins (hat tip to Derrida and the “parergon”), but it’s interesting to note how, when you’re faced with the question “Why do you write?” or “What makes you write?”, the answer isn’t always right close to hand. I reach, I suffer, I stutter…but I am sure I am working towards something, and all the infinite queries we can make out of our moments seem damned interesting to me.<a href="undefined">J.D. Harms</a> 2020</article></body>

What to write for…

Lately, and possibly influenced by the number of poets on Medium who’ve taken the new formatting rather hard, it’s been on my mind to try to figure out what it is I’m hoping my writing (individual pieces and the reason for the whole corpus) will achieve. Last month, in my interview with Zay Pareltheon, I said “I don’t know” to the question as to what drives me to write. That’s not a great answer, not really befitting a writer who does his damnedest, daily, to work out how to express a given moment/memory/an event.

Part of the difficulty for me, as I recently admitted to Eli, is that my reading is entirely chaotic. Speaking of the possibility of writing research-oriented fiction, I had to say that I don’t quite have the discipline to read the entirety of a literature around a given object/event/period and use that to exercise character development (whether I’m actually capable of so disciplining myself was neither the question, nor the uptake from the answer). I am, at the moment, reading Paul Auster, Roland Barthes, Pablo Neruda, Hans-Georg Gadamer and Bernard Cornwell, not to mention the hundreds of writers I read on Medium. Not one of the books I reading reach for same thing as the others. Not one of these authors takes the same historical point of departure. Though all of them were working in the 20th Century, that and the fact they are male (which is entirely coincidental; two days ago I finished The Penelopiad by Atwood), is where the similarity ends.

But this is where, too, I have to confess that not only my writing is compulsive, but my reading is as well. It’s almost just the sheer joy of having a book in my hand is enough reason for me to pick one up. That’s not entirely the case. Only last year I realized that I had limited time for reading books that I didn’t enjoy (cue Midnight’s Children; why did no one tell Rushdie it was about 150 to 200 pages too long?).

I don’t know that I have any interest in creating anything like a grand narrative of life, or even of myself. I have, though, begun to think of my work as pieces of a greater whole. It seems to me, while I write things that concern (more or less) diverse subjects, experience, both of something and the experience of writing itself, keep driving me. But, much as the epoch is a bracketed section removed from a (not-necessarily linear) history, each piece is a fragment of a total experience: that is, my life. That’s certainly not to claim that I am writing to share with you my personal experiences. I write about plenty of things about which I do not know.

However, I feel like the execution of a piece represents, at bare minimum, the experience of at least one instant in time: the time I am writing. This is continuous, obviously, and the beauty of it is that there’s always something to say. Yes, sometimes I get obtuse; the philosopher in me loves grappling with abstract concepts, but, not, I hope, to simply pile more abstractions on top of it. I still believe that the poem itself, as much as it is made out of concrete words, relies on the concrete images/connections to drive them.

As I am sure is the case with (many, all) of you, writing itself is a deeply pleasurable experience, one that I am not prepared to let go of any time soon. It may not be true, anymore, to say that I am “struggling” in the margins (hat tip to Derrida and the “parergon”), but it’s interesting to note how, when you’re faced with the question “Why do you write?” or “What makes you write?”, the answer isn’t always right close to hand. I reach, I suffer, I stutter…but I am sure I am working towards something, and all the infinite queries we can make out of our moments seem damned interesting to me.