Prose and poetry—

It is noteworthy
that the great masters of prose
have almost always been poets, too–
if not publicly than at least secretly, in the ”closet.”

Good prose is written only face to face with poetry.

For it is an uninterrupted,
well mannered war with poetry:
all of its attractions depend on the way in which poetry
is continually avoided and contradicted.

Everything abstract wants to be read as
a prank against poetry
and as with a mocking voice;
everything dry and cool is meant
to drive the lovely goddess into lovely despair.
Often there are rapprochements, reconciliations for a moment
–and then a sudden leap back and laughter.
Often the curtain is raised and harsh light let in
just as the goddess is enjoying her dusks and muted colors.

Often the words are taken out of her mouth
and sung to a tune that drives her to cover her refined ears
with her refined hands.
Thus there are thousands of delights in this war,

including the defeats of which the unpoetic souls,
the so-called prose-men, do not know a thing;
hence they write and speak only bad prose.
War is the father of all good things;*

war is also the father of good prose.

–excerpt The Gay Science, Book 2, Section 92 by Friedrich Nietzsche

*Heraclitus, fragment 53

It is not the role of the writer to judge his/her own work, whether the work achieves excellence.  I am obligated to do the best work that experience and life-energy make possible today.  Words will be left for others to judge.  Those who  pass judgment are sometimes not yet born.

Good work is the product of friction, exposure to the foreign, to forms-of-life that are outside of my comfort zone.  One “leans in” to bodily absorb the rhythm of a mysterious music, cuisine, painting, a photograph, etc…  The leap of faith is a wager that life is more capacious than I know, that I fall into the grace of what another knows.  Discomfort, internal friction caused by admitted state of ignorance confronted by shapes, colors, festivals, even gods embraced by others, expands my sense of self, prompts voices.  I hear voices, – as if a child’s cry.

And that is how one learns to write well.

Trial and error, and by laughing.