Triggering obsessions

Somewhere recently I came across a mention of Richard Hugo's classic, The Triggering Town, but I can't remember where. Anyway, it reminded me to go pull my copy off the shelf. This relates back to my earlier post on obsession in art. Hugo writes about a poet's triggering subject, the subject that initiates the writing of a poem (versus the subject that the poem comes to mean):

Our triggering subjects, like our words, come from obsessions we must submit to, whatever the social cost…

 

If you are a private poet, then your vocabulary is limited by your obsessions. It doesn’t bother me that the word “stone” appears more than thirty times in my third book, or that “wind” and “gray” appear over and over in my poems to the disdain of some reviewers. If I didn’t use them that often I’d be lying about my feelings, and I consider that unforgivable. In fact, most poets write the same poem over and over…

 

So you are after those words you can own and ways of putting them in phrases and lines that are yours by right of obsessive musical deed. You are trying to find and develop a way of writing that will be yours and will... generate things to say. Your triggering subjects are those that ignite your need for words. When you are honest to your feelings, that triggering town chooses you. Your words used your way will generate your meanings. Your obsessions lead you to your vocabulary. Your way of writing locates, even creates, your inner life…

1:56:11 PM      trackback [] 

The Writer's Almanac

Just found The Writer’s Almanac, a program of poetry and history hosted by Garrison Keillor on the Minnesota Public Radio site. You can sign up to have the Almanac emailed to you every morning. I found it via Dervala, who amusingly points out that the daily emails “come with two links: ‘Listen’ (a Real Audio file) and, more promisingly, ‘How to Listen’.”

From today's history notes:

It's the birthday of Dario Fo, born in San Giano, Lombardy, Italy (1926). He writes satires about people lost in the gears of bureaucracy. In Archangels Don't Play Pinball (1959), a man discovers that his identity papers show he is registered as a hunting dog. He can only unravel the confusion by entering a kennel and trying to behave as much like a dog as he can. Fo won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1997, and the Roman Catholic Church said it couldn't understand how the Committee could have given the award to someone who had written such "questionable works."

1:17:11 PM      trackback [] 

Dream

This morning I dreamed that I woke up on the edge of a canyon, which looked sort of like my screensaver image of the Grand Canyon. I was clinging to a column of canyon wall, very precariously. I’m afraid of heights. I can barely move. Then it occurs to me to get out my digital camera – I guess I figure I can post one on my blog. With my left arm I gingerly reach into my pack and rummage around for my camera, still clinging with my right arm and my body against the rocks. I find it and have to change hands to try to get a picture, not really being able to see well around the rocks, and I manage to one-handedly snap a couple of shots. I stuff the camera back into my pack. Then below my left foot, away from the canyon, I see a… chair? It’s one of those kitchen stools with a soft vinyl cushion and the seat can turn. I put my foot down to test it and it holds. So I climb down and I’m free.

Saved by blogging.

Although, now that I'm up, I feel like I'm back on that anxious edge of a canyon. Big empty space.

7:28:24 AM      trackback []