Vocational Counseling

A young man who writes to me anonymously resolved several years ago to become a poet, but he finds himself unable to write poetry. He complains that he’s at a loss for “subject matter,” that he’s unable to compose more than two or three consecutive lines, and that all of them remind him of lines written by other poets. He is not yet prepared to renounce the poetic vocation, but the realization that a poet is a person who writes poetry has shaken him mightily. Of course, this hasn’t stopped Billy Collins, but my young friend is cut from more scrupulous cloth than our former poet laureate.

We have yet to shake off the Romantic notion of writing as a calling, an indulgence in lyrical subjectivity having nothing to do with “vocational skills” and the interests of “the marketplace.” How many young and not-so-young people torment themselves with writerly dreams only to end up working at the dollar store or in media relations? We tend to write what others have already written – this is both inevitable and not always a bad thing. How often are new genres created or old ones revived? Samuel Johnson embodies my notion of “the writer” as hardworking professional, a view elaborated on by Paul Fussell in Samuel Johnson and the Life of Writing. Fussell sets out Johnson’s heroic adaptability:

“During his long career he exercised himself, often anonymously, in more of the various literary `kinds’ than perhaps any other writer has ever done. Consider: he worked in tragedy, biography, the periodical essay, the oriental tale, the travel book, the political tract, the critical essay, and the book review; in the oration, the sermon, the letter, the prayer, the dedication, the preface, the legal brief, and the petition to royalty; in the poetic satire, the Horatian ode, the elegy, the theatrical prologue and epilogue, the song, the Anacreontic lyric, the epigram, and the epitaph. He was a master even of the advertisement, the political handbill, and the medical prescription. Few friends who needed anything written were ever turned away, so long as what they wanted was in a genre in which Johnson felt comfortable.”

Fussell cites the contemporary forms in which Johnson declined to work – the novel, stage comedy, the Pindaric ode, and the pastoral. All were genres to which he had ethical objections or was temperamentally unsuited. Fussell continues:

“If it is true that he could not write everything, it is also true that no other writer of his time wrote in so many forms. One reason he was able to do this is that he was working before the widespread belief that writing is necessarily a self-expressive act verging on confession.”

That’s the heart of it. How many writing careers have been scuttled by the inability to see beyond the confessional mode? I would point my friend toward the example of Johnson himself, and his numerous observations on the writing life. Boswell reports what is probably Johnson’s best known observation: "No man but a blockhead ever wrote, except for money." And in Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides, Boswell has him saying: "A man may write at any time, if he will set himself doggedly to it.” Even stronger is this, on the lack of “subject matter,” from The Adventurer, No. 95, published Oct. 2, 1753:

"The complaint, therefore, that all topicks are preoccupied, is nothing more than the murmur of ignorance or idleness, by which some discourage others, and some themselves; the mutability of mankind will always furnish writers with new images, and the luxuriance of fancy may always embellish them with new decorations."

In other words, my friend, don’t worry about being a poet. Just write – poetry and anything else, derivative or buck-naked new-to-the-world. Of course, read everything, and don’t forget to live. And don’t forget that reading and writing are essential parts of living, at least for readers and writers. I just read a pertinent interview with Roger Kimball, the editor and publisher of The New Criterion, published at FrontPage magazine. Ignore your politics and your preconceptions about his politics, and just read it:

“Yes, reading is the best propaedeutic for anyone wishing to write—that and, of course, the habit, the discipline of writing. I have always admired Anthony Trollope in this regard. He said that it wasn't genius that underwrote his immense productivity but rather his habit of pulling his chair up to his desk and writing. He arose every day at 5:30, was at his desk by 6:00 a.m., and got off a good 2,500 words before he left for his real job at the Post Office. But nurturing that salutary discipline was another habit: the habit of careful reading. I myself think we are probably too promiscuous in our reading habits. It is good to be well informed on a broad range of topics, of course, but it is better to read 6 serious books carefully than 25 books breezily. In an important sense, the most important, the most fertile reading is re-reading: coming back to something a second, third, or sixth time. It is important to make some books a part of oneself: to internalize their arguments, their rhythms, their emotional and intellectual weather. That is one reason that I believe it is important to memorize poems and other literary passages: "rote learning" is much deprecated today, but actually there is a lot to be said for it. It stocks one's intellectual larder with nourishment that is thereafter instantly available.”

I had to look it up, too: “Propaedeutic,” as a noun, means “preparatory instruction;” in other words, essential background information. Get to it.