Writing Journal: What I think I learned this week

I write a lot. Guess I should actually review what I said and get ready to swallow my pride.

I’m realizing you guys could care less about what I say, as I have zero credibility. That’s a legitimate concern to have. At best, I’m just a student and reader: I very visibly struggle to write.

How can I demonstrate credibility? The simplest way is to show I actually review my own words and hold myself accountable. Credibility isn’t only having expertise, though that matters. It’s something that stems from showing that one wants to know what one doesn’t know. It’s showing that one is open to correction and improvement.

What I Wrote: On Paintings

This week, I wrote a bunch on paintings. I am no art historian — not even close - but I made to sure to look up each one I wrote about and take as many opinions as I could find into account:

• John Singer Sargent, “The Misses Vickers” (1884)
• Hendrick ter Brugghen, “The Incredulity of St. Thomas” (1622)
• Lawrence Alma-Tadema, “An Apodyterium” (1886)

In my unprofessional opinion, each has a depth that a superficial glance can easily miss. Sargent’s portrait of three sisters, savaged by critics, looks both staged and playful. I wondered aloud if we were meant to be in the position of the portraitist, who they seem to be teasing with their behavior. Brugghen’s “Doubting Thomas” is easy to pass over. But when one considers how the various men of faith are reacting to Christ, it proves to be a comment on how we conceive faith. Finally, Alma-Tadema’s scene from a bathhouse invites reflection on shame and modesty through a demure beauty who might be mistaken for the only important element in the picture.

I’m not unhappy with my writing, though it gets a bit clunky in places. The fundamental issue of having any credibility is nicely addressed by talking about how the various things I consulted contributed to what I saw.

What I wrote: On Poems

No one online cares for opinions on poetry, even if they care about poetry in the first place. Since many of the poems I write on are relatively recent, there is no way to find secondary sources that might help me make an argument or advance an insight. Not that it really matters, since no one cares anyway. It’s a shame, as the scholars I love the most very carefully read and are curious themselves how reading works. It seems to me reading closely is an extension of their ability to listen, to focus, to take others’ opinions seriously.

Here’s what I wrote about this week:

• Tom Pickard, “anabatic”
• Alison Croggon, “Small Things”
• Kay Ryan, “Still Start”

Pickard had one bold, powerful image: birds rising together in order to fly south for the winter. That got me thinking about the problem of class and “making it” in society. Pickard doesn’t tell us about the goal of the birds, going so far as to make it unclear whether the wind will have its way with them. I took this to point to the problem of how we blame each other for not surviving. One who is barely eating is condemned as lazy or dumb. The birds, at least, make their attempt to escape death together.

Croggon’s “Small Things” has rich poetic language, rolling off the tongue easily. It’s a gem of a poem. It roughly depicts a “state of nature” in the style of Hobbes or Locke and argues that the passions which give us a sense of order also conspire to annihilate “small things.” It was not hard for me to speak about how “faction,” which Madison proclaimed the inevitable and welcome consequence of liberty, has devolved into cultishness.

Kay Ryan’s “Still Start” was a poem I had given up on. I had shelved it under “obvious” some time ago, but then I was stuck at a train station and forced to reread my journal to pass the time. The reread clicked. I’m not unhappy with my speculation.

Writing about poetry is tricky. It is very easy to get lost in a tangle of words and overextend metaphor to ridiculous extremes. I confess that I am guilty of both and a lot more. Still, I think I hit some salient themes and carefully built the case for the relevance of the details I thought hit hardest.

Conclusion

I’ve been apologizing for my writing for a while, as I don’t have readers. That sticks in my head this way: I’m doing something wrong. Granted, I have written a number of incomprehensible posts that skip talking about how I’m getting meaning from a particular detail and lurch too quickly for deep sounding conclusions.

But this week — this one week — I haven’t been perfect, but I’ve probably said quite a few things that matter and provided my approach and evidence to that end. Or, at least, they should matter. Readers aren’t the mark I’m doing my job. I’m fighting to be credible with only one person, when all is said and done.