Ask the Author: Egon H.E. Lass
Answered Questions (4)
Egon H.E. Lass
Heir to the Glimmering World, by Cynthia Ozick
Egon H.E. Lass
Hi Ted, hope this reaches you. I tried the email you provided and could not send. In any case, great to hear from you! Egon
Egon H.E. Lass
READ! Every day I read ten pages in one book on archaeology, and two more pages in another book on archaeology. Then I read several pages in a journal (Bookforum, The American Scholar, The Biblical Archaeological Review), and finally I read several poems in recent or ancient poetry books. Chances are that some phrase that I have come across will set me off to write a poem; but there are days when nothing is inspiring, and very few days indeed when I have written an acceptable poem. Elsewhere I have stated that about one in ten of the poems I write is acceptable.
Egon H.E. Lass
Alright, about my recent book. I’ve been writing poetry all my life, and in every stage of development I have thought of myself as someone special. This was indicative of a huge blind spot in self-judgment. I have never been anyone special, although life arranged situations in which I was forced occasionally to do extraordinary things. Of the tens of thousands of poems I have written, only a few survive, the rest was mediocre trash. Carson McCullers completing one of the great masterpieces of American literature at age 23 was gifted. Very few people can say the same, and I am not one of them.
I had finally accepted myself as a failed poet, because time tells all. After a year or two one realizes that the things that were done in a wave of self-enforcing enthusiasm had nothing extraordinary about them. I had rather accepted myself as a minor voice in archaeology, because after years in the field I was finally able to contribute substantially to several prestigious volumes. I am presently working on a project that has extraordinary aspects about it. Gathering primary data takes a lot of focus, and since my mind would not quiet down, I had to empty it of the ideas that often disturbed my concentration. So I developed a strict routine: Work on archaeological papers in the afternoon. Reading and writing poetry from 4 to 6 o’clock, and gathering archaeological data in the evening. Since 2012 I have written in the vicinity of 1500 poems. At first I published every 150 additional poems on Amazon Services, having no other hopes for them. In 2014 I thought that I ought not to go so gentle into that good night, because if in the not too distant future I would be leaving the earth, no one should be able to tell me, you did not try! So I unpublished everything but one book of older poems on Amazon, chose a bunch of my recent poems and sent them out to various presses that reliably rejected them. And suddenly I get a tentative letter of acceptance from FutureCycle Press. Tentative, because I had been careless in my choice of poems (not expecting anything to come of my efforts). The peer-reviewers said that several of my poems were “silly,” and must be removed. One of them said that he/she liked the “consistent weirdness” of my poems. I immediately replaced the “silly” poems with others, and got the comment, “This is better.” Somewhat later, I chose five more poems that ought to be replaced in my manuscript, but FutureCycle Press forbade me to change anything! The result, “A Lean Against the Wheel,” is before you. To demonstrate just how unexceptional I am, I submitted another manuscript to the press, and was roundly rejected. But I took their criticisms to heart and arranged my poems accordingly, although there is one criticism that worried me: “This type of poetry wears thin after a while.” I did not know what was meant by it, possibly a lack of chemistry between writer and reader, about which I could do nothing. Several manuscripts are circling out there as we speak. I write so many poems that inevitably, as if by accident, some of them will be acceptable, about one out of ten. This is not a matter of talent or any special gift. This is a matter of Sitzfleisch. Huge, unrelenting effort, which is entirely beyond yourself and your natural gifts.
I had finally accepted myself as a failed poet, because time tells all. After a year or two one realizes that the things that were done in a wave of self-enforcing enthusiasm had nothing extraordinary about them. I had rather accepted myself as a minor voice in archaeology, because after years in the field I was finally able to contribute substantially to several prestigious volumes. I am presently working on a project that has extraordinary aspects about it. Gathering primary data takes a lot of focus, and since my mind would not quiet down, I had to empty it of the ideas that often disturbed my concentration. So I developed a strict routine: Work on archaeological papers in the afternoon. Reading and writing poetry from 4 to 6 o’clock, and gathering archaeological data in the evening. Since 2012 I have written in the vicinity of 1500 poems. At first I published every 150 additional poems on Amazon Services, having no other hopes for them. In 2014 I thought that I ought not to go so gentle into that good night, because if in the not too distant future I would be leaving the earth, no one should be able to tell me, you did not try! So I unpublished everything but one book of older poems on Amazon, chose a bunch of my recent poems and sent them out to various presses that reliably rejected them. And suddenly I get a tentative letter of acceptance from FutureCycle Press. Tentative, because I had been careless in my choice of poems (not expecting anything to come of my efforts). The peer-reviewers said that several of my poems were “silly,” and must be removed. One of them said that he/she liked the “consistent weirdness” of my poems. I immediately replaced the “silly” poems with others, and got the comment, “This is better.” Somewhat later, I chose five more poems that ought to be replaced in my manuscript, but FutureCycle Press forbade me to change anything! The result, “A Lean Against the Wheel,” is before you. To demonstrate just how unexceptional I am, I submitted another manuscript to the press, and was roundly rejected. But I took their criticisms to heart and arranged my poems accordingly, although there is one criticism that worried me: “This type of poetry wears thin after a while.” I did not know what was meant by it, possibly a lack of chemistry between writer and reader, about which I could do nothing. Several manuscripts are circling out there as we speak. I write so many poems that inevitably, as if by accident, some of them will be acceptable, about one out of ten. This is not a matter of talent or any special gift. This is a matter of Sitzfleisch. Huge, unrelenting effort, which is entirely beyond yourself and your natural gifts.
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