Nerd!

When I am smack dab in the middle of my despair, I ask myself,what these years of academic training in literary criticism has done for me. It has done a lot. LOT. But more than anything else, it has taught me to be an active reader. An active reader as against a passive consumer. It has taught me to wriggle inside the belly of a text. It has taught me to find space within a text to stretch myself. And now that I have learnt to read this way, my relationship to the "world" and the "text" will never be the same again. I am a more complicated person to deal with now. But also probably....wiser

Where Am I Going With This Project?

I have been working for the last few days on this project. It is not necessarily new. Originally, I had included it as a section in my manuscript which I had compiled for JHG's summer workshop. Someone in the workshop suggested that this can be a chapbook in itself. I had kept the thought locked in some compartment of my head, but didn't really think about it much. Because the poems, I guess, seemed to be too personal, written from an I-voice, and yes, angry and whiny. But then, I began to re-visit the project again. Revised some poems for the UCLA workshop. The folks there generally liked them. And I, too, was looking for a "manageable" book/chapbook-length project that I can lift off the ground while writing the dissertation. I began to work on it again. In the last month or so, I have written some new poems aimed exclusively for this project. I must say, the poems that I have written are not exactly in my comfort-zone. I am writing them, I am trying hard here, but I am still afraid. So what are the fears that I have for this project:

1. the poems will be read as a sort of vulgar autobiographical exercise

2. the earlier poems and the ones I am writing now are different in their essential aesthetics. That can mean both--it can be a source of strength, or a source of weakness. I am not sure how it would look in this particular project.

3. These poems are based on family dynamics. Mother-daughter, father-daughter relationships. The daughter's character/voice looms large here. She is the one who is doing the "seeing", the "narrating", the "writing." There are poems which are also on the conjugal relationships of the parents. Some on the mother's relationship to her parents. But these are all narrated by the daughter. So, the daughter's voice acts as a filter. Now, here comes my biggest fear. Will these poems mean anything to anyone other than me? What it is that I am trying to reconstruct here? Obviously, the easy answer is "the personal is political." But a lot of the American poetry, especially women's poetry I am reading these days, seems to be all personal, and no political. There are lots of re-countings of everyday details of the persona-narrator's life, without necessarily reflecting on the larger implications. Without necessarily trying to answer the "so what" question.(This demands a post in itself.) I am not too interested in writing a book of poems which would sound/read like that. So, yes, I am worried about the ideological/political implications of the work I am doing here.

But also, I don't want to stop here. I want to go on, and see where this leads me. Maybe, once I am done with the first draft, I will begin to have a better sense of it? The thing is, I know so many people who have let their fears of "implications", "ideological value" , "political relevance" of their work stop themselves midway in the project, that I don't want to go down that same path. So, let's see.

In the Middle of Rejections

Ever since the NaWriPoMo began, I have written four poems. All of them are re-fashionings of older work, but still, they are more complete now, with definite arcs. They are full-fledged first drafts now. I have also submitted to a few places in the last week--some by snail mail, some electronically. This is the least favorite part of what I have to do as a writer, but also something that I have come to recognize as essential.

I have been thinking about the role rejection plays in one's growth as a creative artist/scholar etc. Why?Because, I am in the middle of rejections. Which often does make me think, maybe I am not that good enough. Maybe I should have just chosen some "safer" career-paths. Like being a secretary or a high school teacher, where the pressures to be "innovative" in this way does not exist. It is only during this last week that I have explicitly recognized, how both my chosen profession (literary/cultural scholar) and vocation(writer) are highly dependent upon subjective evaluations. Which basically translates into this: I might work very hard for a project, even put my best into it, but that does not mean I have any control over the reception. Reception, like production itself, is dependent upon too many factors.

Now, this is also an interesting life-lesson in itself. I might spend a whole lot of time talking to someone about race, gender, sexuality, sexuality, progressive politics, the intersection between political and the personal blah blah blah, but at the end of the day, my emotional investment in that person does not mean much more than my emotional investment. He/she will take it up at his/her own pace, re-mix it with things he/she is receiving from the historical/cultural/social environment around, reject some, accept some etc. And there will be lots of people in this world who will not take anything at all.This can be frustrating, especially when I am passionate about something, someone, and badly want to convince someone of something, or want my work to reach a larger audience. But I don't see any way around it. My work, my hard labor will be rejected-- probably many more times than it will be accepted. Do I stop writing then? Do I stop interacting with people about things I am passionate about? Do I stop developing the ideas for my dissertation? I don't think so!

Because that would be the ultimate defeat, the ultimate act of self-immolation. My voice, my words, my ideas have emerged out of my interactions with life, my experiences. They are by no means perfect, they are as limited as I am...but at the end of the day, they do have some relevance for ... if for no one else, for me...and hopefully, a couple of other people. So, I cannot stop working. I cannot deliberately stop myself from growing. Writing this post wouldn't really solve any of the problems right now, but it is definitely making me feel calmer, and more energized to go back to the work-table once again.

A Day In the Life Of...

Reading


Lunch


What I Had For Breakfast: 2 Cups of It

Writing...er, dissertation...and a brand-new poem....

Work

Deliver me from writers who say the way they live doesn't matter. I'm not sure a bad person can write a good book, If art doesn't make us better, then what on earth is it for.
---Alice Walker

This is definitely not how I felt when I was younger, but as I am growing older, I feel, being a writer is about doing the writing, true. But it's also a way of being in this world.In that it is more than just writing. I feel like I have to be more critical and more loving at the same time, in order to be the writer I want to be. I am someone who believes in the autonomy of the text, the ability of the text to generate meanings irrespective of the text-maker, but as I am getting into the act of creative writing more and more, and getting introduced to more and more writers, I am beginning to see how biography too is important for the art/text we make.Our contradictions surface invariably in the art we produce. Our art, the texts we produce invite us to explore our contradictions. Whether we choose to do it or not, depends on us. Human beings, as much as they try, do not lead compartmentalized lives after all.

TidBits

Left-overs always taste so much better! Couple of days ago, I made this kosha mangsho with goat meat. I followed this recipe almost verbatim. Koshano is a form of slow-cooking, I guess. But it does some magical things to the meat.

In another week, we will bang right into National Poetry Writing Month. I don't think it will be a good idea for me to try to do the challenge with the dissertation still looming large in the background. Instead, I am taking up the challenge of working on my poems everyday. I don't know if that will amount to writing a new poem, or revising an old one. Sometimes, it takes me three or four days (or more) to get a poem out of my system. I don't want to yank out a poem a day because of April happens to be some kind of poetry month. But it does feel good to see that poetry receives a kind of special attention during this April, and there are events around it.

The dissertation-chapter is moving, although not as fast as I would like it to go. But it's moving!I have a strange, inconsistent relationship to deadlines. In case of the dissertation, the deadline to submit at least once to the writing group during a semester has been very very helpful. It has made me sit down, organize my thoughts, and just to produce something. Even if that "something" happens to be very rough, sketchy, and tentative. I mean, if I have a first draft at least I can go back to it, revise,and make it better. But it's hard to produce that first draft, often times! In case of my creative writing, I prefer to write without deadlines, and then put them up for workshops. Sometimes, I have generated new stuff for a workshop, and have revised the existing stuff extensively. But in general, I do like to produce creative stuff on my own time, and then use the workshop for thinking through the feedback.

A Nice Evening

Last night, RR and I went out for an impromptu “date.” Since we are both very interesting people, our idea of a “date” consists of going to Mozart, shit-talking about the yuppies who have HUGE homes up on the cliff, watching the ducks swim in the green water, trashing the spoilt-brats who knife through the water in their privately-owned yachts, and drinking cappuccino. Oh yes, we also set our timers, and wrote. For the last couple of days, I have been writing my dissertation at home, in the mornings, right after waking up and breakfast coffee. So I worked on doing some drastic revisions on a poem while RR worked on de diss.

Later, we went to Buenos Aires Cafe, did some more people-watching, and ate some really good food. Empanadas as appetizers, some very meaty stuff for entrees, and then a dark chocolate crème brulee for dessert, and talked some more about literature, film, the relationship between craft and ideology. All in all it was a productive evening which helped me get out of the hopelessness of not landing any huge fellowship yet for the next academic year!

I kind of have an idea what I want to write for this chapter of my dissertation, and I am not letting the “I need to read more before I can begin to write” impulse to get the better of me. Instead, once I am done with the writing quota of the day, I try to devote some time to the reading/catching up on the secondary materials. And then, once I am done with the first draft of the chapter, I can go back and do a more thorough finalization of the whole thing. But I need to have the basic work done before anything else. This, often, for me, is the hard work. Because at this stage, I am trying to figure out what my arguments are going to be. So, it's a lot of active brain-storming. But I think best when I write. This is something I have discovered about myself in the last one year, while writing my dissertation.