letters to a young poet
Letters to Selin:
Dearest Selin,
As I have already told you, you have messed up my precious newsletter schedule. I had been planning to discuss our new book club read: Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow, in this pink themed email. 3 books, that’s my minimum. But you, Selinka, were too busy being marvellous and having a life, to finish the book in time for this e-mail.
So it was Saturday, and I had to find a pink book to read quickly-ish. Usually I don’t go out looking for a book just for the newsletter. But it ended up being fun, and I hope you don’t find me inauthentic for picking my books this way for once. I tried to read Bunny (a pink book I’ve been dying to read, already in my shelves, but I want to savour it, and so it will be savoured).
It’s not simple to find a thin pink book (preferably in English), that’s worth purchasing. But I have found one. Letters to a young poet.
I’ve been trying to learn to write better. Write some poems. Try to tame my overwhelming run-on sentences and never-ending speech. And I think this book helped a little. Made me think a little. A little more than usual, about poems, from someone who knows what they’re on about.
So this is a thank you letter Selin. Thank you, for making it so, that I got this book.
Love, hugs and squeezes,
Your dear silly friend,
Eve
Apparently, I’m supposed to know who this is. I haven’t looked it up but from what I’ve gathered he was a very famous German poet in the late 1800s. The book is divided into letters, sent from him to Xaver Kappus: the young poet. Xaver had sent Rainer his work and wanted feedback on his verses, and instead they began a correspondence that lasted some years. Only Rainer’s replies are included. 10. I don’t know if they are complete or 10 were selected. Since this is a book I gather no one will be running out to buy (it’s small and specific and random) I think I’ll attack this review letter by letter and try to relay the tastiest bits of wisdom Rainer offers.
Note:
Every letter starts with something like: Dear Mr Kappus, it’s been far too long since I received your last letter … I apologise … blah blah. Nowadays Rainer could just say: I’m a slow texter. I’m doing a digital detox. That kind of thing.
Also, non-fiction is hard to write about. Not sure what I’m doing. And I know nothing of this subject.
letter one: on writing
“You ask whether your verses are good […] Now let me ask you to give up all that. You are looking to the outside […] go into yourself”
Makes sense. Something should be good because you like it. Sucks for Xaver who wanted feedback.
“Ask yourself in your night’s quietest hour: must I write?”
“A work of art is good if it has arisen out of necessity”
This one I have more of an issue with. Sometimes yes Rainer, I need to write, a lot of people do. But it sounds like people think that’s when the best music or poems or diary entries are written. Sometimes I just write because it would be a nice thing to do. Because its sunny and it would be beautiful to be the kind of person to sit in a park and write. Or because I should. That’s probably even better stuff than when I have to. When I have to, my diary comes out all scribbly and it’s all nonsense and I love it and yeah it’s emotional but it’s kind of one note. I am SO HAPPY I GOT THREE WHOLE ICE CREAMS TODAY. Or IM SO MAD because my MUM said I should get a haircut. When I sit, and think, I should write, because it’ll help me figure out what this is about. Or because it would make me a better writer. Or because it would make me feel accomplished to have written today. Then it’s much more thought out, and it’s no less real just because it would be ok if I wasn’t doing it at all.
I, Rainer, am not a snob. There’s no best reason for writing. Writing rights.
I mean Rainer goes as far as to say “the feeling that one could live without writing is enough, as I said, to make it something one should never do”. Bit far don’t you think?
“Try, like the first human being, to say what you see and experience and love and lose”.
Gosh I love this one. I agree Rainer. I kind of hate writing poems and thinking: well its all been written before and better than me or that’s so cliché or of course red makes me think of love or anger. I wish I could just write. It’s especially true with romantic art.
But all of it.
If I thought: its ok to write it the way I actually feel it (I love the way he put it: first human) I think I’d probably end up coming up with more original things anyways.
Like, wow this new feeling. I’m the only one that can describe it to you, so here goes! That would be a cool way to write.
letter two: on help
“For one person to be able to help another, a great deal must come right, a whole constellation of things must concur for it to be possible at all”
That is so sweet an amazing in a way. Any time I’ve managed to help someone, so much stuff had to be just right for that moment to come about. Nice. So I guess take every opportunity there is to help someone.
letter three: on what to write
“Read as little as possible in the way of aesthetics and criticism […] It will be neat wordplay, where one opinion will triumph one day and the opposite the next. […] Works of art are infinitely solitary. Only love can grasp them and hold them and do them justice.”
“Everything must be carried to term before it is born. To let every impression and germ of every feeling come to completion inside, in the dark … in the unsayable: that alone is to live as an artist.”
Just some things I don’t have much to add to, but think are interesting.
letter seven: on love and women
“Young people, who are beginners in everything, do not yet know how to love, they must learn”
“Many young people who love wrongly – that is with abandon and not in solitude”
I’m usually not one for making small the feelings of young people – but I think Rainer says this with understanding. And for him, love is a solitary activity. I like that idea, I guess the lesson I think he is teaching me is: focus on your part of the loving in a relationship. It’s got a RuPaul ring to it.
“Society has made love a pass-time and as such felt obliged to trivialize it, to make it cheap … as public pleasures usually are.”
Young women are associated with interest in romance in most areas culture. And everyone knows what young women care about must be silly and unimportant. And never to be associated with a straight man if it can be avoided. Men who care about love are soft and kind “oh how sweet”, not silly and desperate. I’ll avoid my angry tangent and just close with the following, Romance as an aesthetic idea was not always so popular – apparently. If you speak French, you should listen to this episode on the emergence of Romantic art and movements – from a podcast recommended to be by the lovely Ambre: Venus s’Épilait-elle La Chatte? (Did Venus shave her vagina?) (Vagina feels like it neds a capital V not sure why)
Rainer then goes on to make a bunch of predictions on what may happen to love and gender. Some a bit simplistic, but others interesting:
“This step forward will transform love into a relationship between two human beings, and no longer between man and woman”
“the love that consists in two solitudes protecting, defining, and welcoming one another”
if you enjoyed letters to a young poet, you might enjoy:
assembly
Natash Brown
in altre parole (in other words)
Jhumpa Lahiri