Day 482: The Poet Vs The Analyst

 

Critics and writers, never the twain on the same thought plane. Writing is hard, it's the doing, the forging, the creating from nothing  - critiquing is easy, it's the looking, the blaming, the picking-out of mistakes like bones, the uncreating. And it can wreck a sensitive writer's soul. 

Look how Anne Sexton illustrates it here, in the last stanza, doubting her own 'win', her own belief and worth, real in her hands, just because a critic casts a shadow on it.

Said The Poet To The Analyst - Anne Sexton

My business is words. Words are like labels,
or coins, or better, like swarming bees.
I confess I am only broken by the sources of things;
as if words were counted like dead bees in the attic,
unbuckled from their yellow eyes and their dry wings.
I must always forget how one word is able to pick
out another, to manner another, until I have got
something I might have said...
but did not.

Your business is watching my words. But I
admit nothing. I work with my best, for instances,
when I can write my praise for a nickel machine,
that one night in Nevada: telling how the magic jackpot
came clacking three bells out, over the lucky screen.
But if you should say this is something it is not,
then I grow weak, remembering how my hands felt funny
and ridiculous and crowded with all
the believing money.