Further Notes on Poetry
from POETRY
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 April 2013
Summary
[Brutus recorded some of these remarks on tape. He wrote others for various publications produced by The University of Texas at Austin.]
On the fragmentary nature of my writing
I turn fifty next month, and in terms of my life span, what I have written is really very little because it tends to be very fragmentary. There is no major statement. Most of my work has been so fragmentary, the statements are so staccato, that one cannot look for a sustained statement except by putting the bits together. Now that to me is not a serious writer. If I was serious, I would have constructed a sustained statement. I may yet. Every now and then I toy with a novel. I have written a play and thrown it away because I didn't like it. I imagine I could do other things.
But again I think there are writers with the temperament to keep writing, like Keats [who wrote] two hours a day and said, “Poetry must come the way the leaves come on the tree.” No effort, it just comes naturally. Well, I don't have that. Shaw said that genius is applying the seat of your pants to the seat of the chair, and that I don't have either, that kind of application. So temperamentally I don't think I'm a writer either. I'm an occasional writer. I'm not a serious writer.
On poetic method
If poetry were merely communication, one might as well write in prose – not that I despise prose, which can be as expressive a medium as any other.
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- Information
- The Dennis Brutus TapesEssays at Autobiography, pp. 197 - 208Publisher: Boydell & BrewerPrint publication year: 2011