What does my writing owe my neighbors?

[susanstinson]

There are dangers here of parochialism, isolation, and romanticizing home (who makes it, at what cost; what happens there; who gets to stay and who gets to leave and who has to stay and who has to leave), but, still, this is speaking to me this morning:

To stay at home is paradoxically to change, to move. When poets -- and people of any other calling -- stay at home the first thing they move away from is professionalism. They move away from "professional standards." Their work begins to develop under pressure of questions not primarily literary: What good is it? Is it at home here? What do the neighbors think of it? Do they read it, any of them? What have they contributed to it? What does it owe them?

from "Notes: Unspecializing Poetry," in Standing by Words by Wendell Berry


PS: A old school bus painted green and white with THE VEGAN BUS painted on its side just had a hard time making the corner to drive down my narrow street. They gave a little toot of a honk a bit farther down. I wonder what's going on at the fairground this weekend! Okay, I just googled: The Vegan Bus. Either they are going to the Hunter/Jumper horse show at the fairgrounds, or some of them just live around here.

Comments

[oneroom.livejournal.com]

Wendell Berry is one of my favorites. One could say he's parochial and romanticizes home, especially if he's read casually. But having spent some (not a huge amount, but some) time with him, I don't think he really is those things.

He left home to do academia, and decided to leave academia to return home to really do home. His decision was costly, economically, and resulted in him doing much more serious, physical work than a professorship would have had him doing.

This quote resonates with me a great deal. In part because of what I know about WB, and in part because I left home and have resettled.

Thank you so much for sharing it.

[susanstinson.livejournal.com]

I haven't read him in years, but his poetry and essays linger in memory as so rooted and strong. One essay about scything, for instance, comes to mind. But, yeah, how cool that you know him.

I was thinking about being parochial and romanticizing home in my context of posting this here, not so much in his. (Although I'm definitely reading him casually, not deeply, this morning.) Multiple meanings of home -- literal and metaphoric -- were bouncing around in my head, along with those questions about accountability, exile, claiming, my actual neighbors, things parts of my friendslist are buzzing about, my novel and its very intense relationship to this place where I've lived for many years, but, still, am only kind of from, all that.

Time to move out into it all. I'm so glad that it resonates with you, and that you told me. Me, too.