Toward Breakthrough: Fool’s Gold, Quicksilver, and the Insistence of Passion

Like patience, passion comes from the same Latin root: pati.

It does not mean to flow with exuberance. It means to suffer.

—Mark Z. Danielewski, House of Leaves

There is scarcely any passion without struggle.

—Albert Camus, The Myth of Sisyphus and Other Essays

Or perhaps Mandela puts it better for our purposes, having said, There is no passion to be found playing small … which is to say the stakes are always high at the Callaloo Creative Writing Workshop. In that way 2013 was no different. We ask within the poetry workshop that the participants bring more than their cleverness to the table. Seems an easy enough request. It isn’t. Cleverness, as an end, is often a facile kind of masking, posing as intellectual keenness and droll indifference at once. O you clever girl you say, or you trim your already excellently shaped Van Dyke, brush your broad shoulders off, and think, Man, you did it again. And you did. You gave it your technical best and wowed the crowd. Kudos. At the CCWW it is our business to see through that, then, to determine if that’s all you want; rather, all you demand of yourself. Technical prowess. And if it is Brava, Bravo, and off you go into the land of language play for its own sake. No spills on your shirt, no embarrassing episodes, no tears of remorse, no outbursts or long goodbyes. It is good enough for you and well, we wish you the best. May you live long and publish.

1

It can be difficult for the lay or untrained eye to tell the difference between gold and pyrite, one of several minerals commonly known as fool’s gold. There are of course ways to tell, but it isn’t always easy. Both have a certain luster, but gold maintains its “shine” even in the shade. Gold is much more malleable, softer edged, ductile. While I’ve seen television versions of the bite test, I’ve never done it myself. Gold is heavier. Interesting word “heavier.” Something with more weight, more heft, and in the case of gold, greater worth. If only I could give you a bag of it to carry to prove the point I’m making: people pan for years because they want the real thing. Everything is risked for it. And, consider, even if one is fooled into picking up that glittery iron pyrite out of some cool current, only a fool would try to sell it for gold, right? I’m using this metaphor not to suggest some kind of crass materialism. I own very little gold and don’t crave it. I’m suggesting that raising the stakes of our desires is not always a bad thing. I am further suggesting that if it is gold we are after, then we should expect more than a few challenges. We may suffer. We may fail. We may weep for want of the thing.

2

According to my brother-in-law James, the neuroscientist, Cells must rapidly adapt to fluctuating environmental conditions to maintain energy and nutrient homeostasis. Remember homeostasis? The will toward balance or equilibrium? We don’t always end up where we start. If something comes up that needs attending, we let go of the agenda and attend to the need. For the 2013 CCWW, I wanted to discuss place; rather, I wanted to discuss displacement, sites accessed beyond topography such as sites of memory, and the impact of various types of removal and relocation on a poet. I had a lecture. I had a plan. And indeed, we did discuss that in part, but the circumstances called for flexibility, so we flexed. By flexibility I mean an expansiveness that allows for changes and even reconsiderations when necessary. Midway through the workshop things felt too comfortable, too still, too familiar, too easy. That can happen. And what we asked for was the pressure of passion, that the poem risk not sentimentality, but emotional resonance. Every poet in the workshop was smart, so what did it mean...