June 8, 2012

Fail Better

"To be an artist is to fail, as no other dare fail... failure is his world and to shrink from it is desertion, art and craft, good housekeeping, living... " (Samuel Beckett)


I've said I'm a poet, but I don't know exactly what that is. From now on, let's define a poet as somebody who writes in broken lines as opposed to unbroken. 

I deliberate over what comes onto the page. Right now, I work on tensions and opposites. I'm interested in traction and think that I can create it out of history, memoir, image, string and paper clips. Language is a system of wheels and pulleys, a contraption of sorts, that one can ride. 

I'm moving, in other words. I'm going to several places at once. I turn to Samuel Beckett and return to Zadie Smith. 

"Fail Better" by Zadie Smith (The Guardian, 2007)
http://faculty.sunydutchess.edu/oneill/failbetter.htm

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