This morning I started reading a book, one of the ones on my pile of books that I have prescribed myself as necessary reading. You know it: that pile we all have (looks great on a bedside table) that makes us feel hopeful for something, while simultaneously making us feel incapable of completing the assignment we assigned ourselves. A Catch 22 of feeling-states. (I haven’t read that one, probably should but probably won’t since I’ve gotten this far.)
Anyways, I was excited to see that the foreword was by Kurt Vonnegut, and I was right to be excited because I was tearing up by the very first sentence. But that’s not what we’re talking about today.
The book is an Anne Sexton collection: Transformations. She is one of my top three favorite poets, so, of course, I bought this book somewhere at some time in some place (Chicago?) because when you’ve declared, even internally, that a writer is your favorite then you must read every word they’ve written, lest someone ask you about it or claim them as their favorite. When we declare “favorites” we feel compelled to then defend that declaration with an arsenal of knowledge, a quiver of arrows to deploy should someone decide to challenge you. I’m not saying that’s a good thing (it isn’t) but rather observing my own impulse. I’d say all of this is just “my own impulse”, my own competitive spirit, or need to prove myself, but I don’t think I’m alone or that it’s all mine. I think you know what I mean whether you want to know or not.
Anyways, I love Anne Sexton and how beautiful and devastating her work is. I’ve noticed “devastation” tends to be a prerequisite for me loving something – another observation of my own impulse to lean into what feels terrible.
Anyways, I love how she says things in ways I could never dream up, or nightmare-up, or sometimes even understand. What I didn’t know when I bought Transformations, and what Vonnegut so deftly informed me of, was that it is Sexton’s retelling of the Brother’s Grimm stories in poetry form.
What! A! Concept! Again, a concept that I could only dream of thinking of. And I suppose that’s the point of your favorite writers, to make you think of things you could never think of. Or at least dream about thinking of things that you could never think of. (Does that still count as a thought?)
As I started reading, I kept stopping, which I find is also what happens to me when I read my favorite writers. That might sound wrong, but hear me out.
I find I assign the word “favorite”, and prescribe myself books, based on their potential to produce in me an entirely new thought. It’s less about story (unless I’m reading a mystery novel, in that case it’s all about story, and sweet, sweet reality-avoidance) and more about feeling, and the potential for more feeling. More about reorganizing my brain; shifting, molding, shaking loose some inspiration (or motivation - I find the two can be at times indistinguishable).
All of that to say, I had to stop reading Sexton’s visceral take on Snow White and The Seven Dwarfs after one or two stanzas, just to write down how I had to stop reading Sexton’s take on Snow White and The Seven Dwarfs after just one or two stanzas.
And this, this right here, held in these words, in these moments, in this 7:16AM with my coffee going cold beside me, is what I am chasing: the need to STOP EVERYTHING to write something down. That is life, to me. That is favorites.