First of all: Keats: Your letter addresses something I've been wondering about "genius." This popular quote from Ulysses comes to mind: "A man of genius makes no mistakes. His mistakes are voluntary and are the doors of discovery." If Genius (I love that it's capitalized) is some sort of mind-independent ghostly or seraphic presence, then he seems to only visit or attach himself to a few people each generation. Why is it so selective? This is a superstitious explanation for "genius", of course, and we know statistically that genius IQs are rare indeed. But I dated this wonderful psychology instructor who is also a clairvoyant, and she insists that "everyone has genius inside them." It may be New Age, kumbaya nonsense, but I think he's right; so Joyce (perhaps unintentionally) talks about everyone (my professor said, “Love your mistakes!” at the end of every class). But how do you access genius so quickly (precocity/child prodigies) and so easily (the daily, casual assembly of great poems)? Returning to your poem: "if the one who writes is an oracle / can heal" is the line that made me suspicious of your motives, but I believe you when you say that you wrote this poem during that prolific eighty-day period. I like the momentary exchange with yourself ("it does") and I'm reminded of Elizabeth Bishop's "One Art", where a stern voice parenthetically interrupts and forces her to complete the poem ("(Write it)") . A prophecy can be comforting, but I think you're talking about self-delusion. "Not post- but meta-mythical/ico" refers to someone, perhaps a self-deluded egoist, who has not definitively dispelled his myths ("post-mythical") but is aware of them and refers to them incessantly... ... middle of the paper ... lucky enough that the "good Genius presides over you", then you are probably obliged to take the job seriously. When one of my classmates became interested in poetry, her gift for it was obvious; the poems were exquisite, but gravely serious. At the microphone during a poetry reading, she closed her eyes, affected a future poet graduate voice, and said things like, “The desert is just one letter away from something sweet.” I kept hearing the Joker say, "Why so serious?" That question inspired my nonsensical, serious, and otherwise crazy poems. (One of my professors told me that literary critics generally try to "impose sense" on nonsense literature, which is irritating; can't nonsense have an integrity of its own?) I'm not saying my poems are funny; they are probably terribly stupid. But I can't write a poem with a straight face. (The good Idiot presides over me!)
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