Get Up and Do It Again

I recognize my capacity for self-delusion, but that solves nothing. Knowledge, despite the platitude, is no guarantee of power. Without a gift for tarting up the awful so it appears merely mediocre, how do we muster the will to continue? Habit, I suppose, which Beckett defined as “the ballast that chains the dog to his vomit.” We do the next thing that needs to be done, that we have done before to some degree of failure, and trust momentum will keep us moving. After a night’s sleep, a respite from truth, we set the whole tricky, Rube Goldberg contraption into motion again. In his book-length interview with Philip Hoy, Anthony Hecht addressed this question, specifically in regard to poetry, though I suspect it applies to other sorts of writing and other endeavors:

“One of the great satisfactions of writing poetry consists in the absolute and indispensable conviction, while one is writing, that one is working at one’s very best. To think otherwise is deeply discouraging, and virtually intolerable. But to feel one is working at one’s best is to call into question the fact that one felt this way about each and every poem one had written in the past, not all of them still regarded with pride or satisfaction, and some of them, alas, now disappointing if not humiliating. This does not bear much dwelling upon.”