Poetry: an inherently lonely task ☝️

Common Measure, Season 1, enters its final month.

Sequestered

Both higher and more lonely in
This solitary craft
That flew beyond the structures of 
The earth, my former life.

I live here in the emptiness,
My individual care,
I’ve come to love the landscape of
The desert in the air.

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Explanation

In “Sequestered,” the speaker contemplates their dedication to their art, which they call their “solitary craft.” 

The notion that an artform like poetry is an airship that flies “beyond the structures of the earth” underscores its superstructural function: poetry is something built on top of life—the real life of biology and necessity—and is therefore “higher.” There is a normative dimension to this assertion: the speaker is being a bit pretentious about their commitment to their art.

However, they acknowledge that this high art is also a lonely one. They see that, by living up away from the cares of the IRL, they are “more lonely,” that they “live in the emptiness.” They even recognize their selfishness in pursuing the heights of poetry when they say that it is their “individual care.”

Lastly, despite the loneliness, isolation, and selfishness of poetry, they have “come to love the landscape of / the desert in the air.”

(The final two lines are an allusion to W.V.O. Quine, a famous philosopher, who described his taste for parsimonious philosophies as “a taste for desert landscapes.”)

Lesson

Writing is often a lonely art. I don’t think this is necessarily a good thing. 

Hold up—I think that there is immense value in learning to be alone, in writing alone, in being constructive in that solo time. However, writing is also hampered by its desertification.

Think of film, for example, which is an inherently collaborative art form. Being on a film set means you are making art together with a whole bunch of people. 

My cousin Alex describes writing a screenplay as “an invitation to collaborate.” I dig it! It would be super cool to collaborate on an art project. I have in the past, like when I played in a band. 

Poetry is so much more difficult for not having a team to do it with. Think about how many discoveries are made in science precisely because of collaboration. What discoveries would be made by poets if they worked as a team?

I think that writing workshops and editing partnerships often fill this role. However, in the future, I would like to further investigate truly collaborative writing. 

Actually, my cousin Alex and I are collaborating on a screenplay right now. I could not be happier with the progress and the product that we’re making. His deep love of story is the perfect complement to my love of language. We are writing together something that I would be totally incapable of writing on my own.

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Update on the publication

Thanks to our first 100 subscribers! That is an awesome milestone. I have been really encouraged by the responses—in the form of comments, replies to the newsletters, and personal conversations that I’ve had offline—that this newsletter has engendered. I really really appreciate you reading this every week. There are a trillion words you could read instead, but you choose to put your eyeballs here.

Season 1 of common measure will run 4 more weeks til the end of June, before beginning Season 2. If you have any feedback for me—i.e., the time of day you receive this could be changed; you want the explanation first, then the poem; you really want to hear one of my old rap songs—let me know, and I’ll try to incorporate it in season 2!

Again, thanks so much for subbing. It means a lot.

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Scansion (poem stats)

Unrhymed¹ common measure, i.e: Alternating 4-stress 3-stress lines; iambic²

Two quatrains³

1. Note that normally common measure must be rhymed, with a rhyme scheme of ABAB. It is, therefore, probably a misnomer to call this “unrhymed common measure.” But hey, I’m a rebel.

2. “Iambic,” A metrical foot (a unit for measuring poetry), two syllables in length, consisting of an unstressed syllable followed by a stressed syllable.

3. “Quatrain,” a stanza (unbroken poetic unit) with four lines.