Tony Hoagland, a poet who presently teaches at the University of Houston, has been one of my recent fantastic discoveries. Damn, you’ve got to love that face!
Not only am I thoroughly enjoying his poems, but he also has great book about poems called “Real sofistikashun: Essays on Poetry and Craft” which is stretching my tethered insights. Tony has given me permission to share a 2-page chapter from his book which I find delightfully insightful and stated with poetic clarity.
Comment suggestion: After reading Hoagland’s short chapter below, please share with us your obsession(s) and how you have used them or how they have used you.
——————————————
Obsession: “Are you still writing about your father”
by Tony Hoagland
A real diehard, indestructible, irresolvable obsession in a poet is nothing less than a blessing. The poet with an obsession never has to search for subject matter. It is always right there, welling up like an Artesian spring on a piece of property with bad drainage. It is a pressing subject that subjectively expresses; it will infiltrate the innocent description of a cloud and inveigle its way into the memory of a distant city. Emily Dickinson’s critics say that death was her “flood subject,” the theme that electrified her language whenever she approached it. A poet without a true obsession, a foundational fracture, a mythic wound, may have too much time to think. The poet without a compelling, half-conscious story of the world may not have a heat source catalytic enough to channel into the work of a lifetime.
The danger of obsession, of course, is the potential for redundancy: immobility, stagnation, narrowness of aperture, confinement, paralysis, arrested development. Neurotic recitation can be boring. The talent of Poet Z may be tethered to lascivious narratives of twenty-something erotic encounters–but can she write them for forty years? Won’t the subject of choice eventually come to seem like watching colorized TV reruns? However, we should be cautious in judging the possessed writer. To say Poet Z is fixated makes it sound like a petulant and willful choice; better to say she is crucified. A well-known American fiction writer discovered his first full power in writing two novels about his Vietnam War experience. Despite earnest and ambitious attempts at a different subject matter, he has been unable to transplant that infusion of genius to another subject. His subject matter owns him. “And ghosts must do again / What gives them pain,” says W.H. Auden.
Still, those without a primary force to drive and aid them, like a spirit guide, or a revenant, have reason to look with envy upon the blessed. Passion is the greatest gift a poet can have, and nobody is mildly obsessed. Violence of feeling can compensate for many other weaknesses in a writer. Stanley Kunitz advises young poets to polarize their contradictions, which we might translate to mean, “cultivate your obsession.” Rather than therapeutically resolve it, try to make a full relationship with it.
In the work of a good poet, it is usually possible to discern one or two characteristic emotional zones in which he thrives: melancholy, rage, pity, vengeful rationality, seduction. A mature poet may not know how to command obsession, but understands how to transfuse material into it and then to surrender. The obsessed psyche knows unerringly where to go, like a Geiger counter to uranium, or a dog to his mater’s grave. Lucky dog, to have a master.
Fields of Yúan 
Thanks so much, Sabio, and Tony Hoagland, for this valuable advice. k.
Ha! I am sorry that I did not think of sharing an obsession. Despite the confessional tone of a lot of my work, there is also an element of fictionalizing and posturing always, and so I somehow feel a bit too private to disclose something as an “obsession”. I think it is useful to identify an obsession as an interior matter, but maybe not to disclose it. That said, I don’t think it’s such a disclosure to say that I have been through a number of deaths of people close to me in the past few years, a few my own age, and that this has been a subject that has deeply affected my work. k.
I don’t have a current obsession but I used to write a lot about unrequited love. It’s awkward and uncomfortable whether you’re the person in love or you’re aware that someone else has such intense feelings for you that you don’t share!
Wait, actually I do have a current obsession: setting limits with mentally ill loved ones who refuse to seek treatment or admit that there’s anything wrong.
I’ve had to deal with this regularly over the past few years. (Trying to) fix other people is absolutely exhausting and it never works. Writing about it has helped me slowly learn to give them only as much emotional energy as I can realistically spare and stop taking responsibility for how they react to my boundaries.
@ ManicD:
I don’t do too much of that “fictionalizing and posturing” in my writing — well, not yet. And I can see how deaths of loved-ones can be an obsession (certainly while the pain is bright).
@ Lydia:
Ah setting limits on the mentally ill — I wish I had no idea what you are talking about. That could be an inspiring obsession that would be wonderful to have dissipate. Unrequited love is so common — I do long for people to move beyond that level of emotional development.
Great writing here…and yes, there are obsessions . 🙂
I enjoyed the Hoagland chapter. Now I will have to figure out what his obsessions are. Ha. I would say my obsessions could be the quickly passing life, legacy, nature, life’s meaning.
@Mary,
Thanx for sharing !
You point out on my blog that one of my obsessions,which feeds my poetry, is the recent death of my husband; and in the answer I gave you there, I said I would set that in the larger context of human relationships. I could narrow it down though, to the context of loss in romantic love. That is probably the emotional zone I thrive in. Ah well, when there is grief, I suppose one may as well get something good out of it. *Wry smile.*
@ Snaky Poet,
I agree (wry smile and all) — “when there is grief, I suppose one may as well get something good out of it.”.
Thanx
Keen interests can quickly become obsessions, no doubt. These days I’m carried along with the examination of emotional hurt, failure, neglect – all the dirty things that soil our relationships. I find it so much easier to write about them because they beg for exploration and explanation. I mean, who cares why you’re happy? No explanation is needed. One just floats in the euphoria hoping it will go on forever. Not so with pain. We all experience it. We all want to avoid it. It demands attention. Without becoming melancholy, the brokenness of human relationships can become a deep well from which to draw poetic inspiration, for a season at least.
@eusebia,
Thank you so much for the explanations. It helps much when reading someone’s poetry or even prose or emails, for that matter. Yes, pain can be every ready for inspiration — often it stops my writing though.