Gloom Cupboard

Joseph Goosey
A Writer’s Paradise

If Frank O’Hara had not been in the position to receive a measly hour lunch break, we would never have read any lunch poems. Conversely, if Frank O’Hara had been able to watch every season of Will & Grace, his collected works would probably be half the size that it is. Are such distractions a necessity to write decent stuff or do they murder all of that precious time that could be put towards the act itself?

Yesterday I had intentions of attending and participating in a local poetry reading. Yesterday I had intentions of writing “Hyberbation #2”. With regards to said poetry reading. Yesterday, of course, I failed to attend said poetry reading. Instead I drank Sam Adams and watched a few movies. Don’t worry though, like most poetry readings, this one is monthly and I still hunger for the attention so I’m sure I will get around to the subject eventually if I am allowed to continue this column.

So there I am, plus one pitcher of Sam Adams, and minus one subject for “Hyberbation #2.” I looked down at myself and my fattening belly and at the television and then it came to me. What came to me?
Nothing.

What I am talking about is a lack of activity. Not activity as in writing some silly poem, but activity as in washing your car, paying your electric bill, writing a research paper on serial killers, brushing your teeth, purchasing new shampoos, clocking in at work or walking across a patch of fresh-cut grass, shit like that. I mean, one of the biggest claims made by schools and conferences and retreats is that they will give you the TIME to write. The MFA programs advertise time as if you can’t get it anywhere but the school itself or as if time in Providence, Rhode Island is much more quality time than in Sacrament and if you are glancing at Gloom Cupboard with any interest whatsoever I am sure you’ve come across something similar to

“James A. Abraham Writers Retreat In New Haven Connecticut: Come
lounge in our garden with free lemonade and rose petals. No one will
bother you here. A writer’s paradise.”

or some such. Who decided that a writer writes best when there is absolutely nothing going on about him and absolutely no outside source trying banging down the doors of his fortress?

What’s this time business I keep hearing about? Since I’m usually entangled in one of those aforementioned activities, I thought, fuck it. I’ll skip and avoid them all. I won’t do anything one day but WRITE WRITE WRITE. I’ll have my own writers retreat and paradise. What does a writer do with all this time? This writer watched Forgetting Sarah Marshall, took a few naps, and got himself off. I may have produced one poem about a giraffe that I subsequently deleted. Perhaps if I had been at Harvard I would have completed some epic achievement, but I doubt it. Time passes the same in Cambridge as it does in Jacksonville.

In this stillness, however, I did manage to develop a sort of poetics. An obnoxious action, of course, but what else was I to do with all that leisure? I am calling it a poetics of opposition. How lame! Not opposition in the revolutionary sense that is shoved down all of our gizzards these days but an opposition to anything. Poetry must rub up against something or else it falls flat. The act of writing a poem is in-itself an opposition because there is so much one should be doing. If you are writing a poem, there is probably another task at hand that you would rather gradually die than complete successfully. However, when one gives themselves some kind of retreat or when one is given a retreat by Brown University that’s when novels start arriving about what the characters of Hamlet were doing during the six months before Shakespeare began Hamlet. Either that, or you drink a pitcher of Sam Adams, fall asleep, and miss your poetry reading.

I’m probably preaching to a bit of a divided choir. The small press is littered with those who compose their poesy in between jobs and shitty diapers, yet there are a few out there who have squeezed through the needle and gotten themselves a residency or sucked it up and gone the MFA route. All of whom cherish their position. The diaper changing poets are always proud of their stance and I don’t think I’ve ever heard anyone with a residency bitch about not having anything to do but write and gaze out a window at the changing seasons. I mean, I would think the former would be hollering for the latter and the latter would recognize their need for the former. Is it not the nature of the poet to want the exact opposite? Maybe not, but it is mine. Writing this, I cannot help but to be curious as to where all of you land and whether or not you want out. I have seen your poems, sure, but where and when were they born?