The Poetic Life

The constant need to express.

Topic: The Poetic Life
C. K. Williams: The challenge is to do it all the time. The challenge is to sit there, basically, 'cause there are so many times when you just want to flee. It's not the life that I would have thought. It's more difficult in some ways. The actual act of writing is both more difficult and more rewarding. The-- You have sort of states of something like ecstasy in your writing when it goes well, when it goes specially well, and that's not something you can imagine when you're first starting out. It certainly wasn't what happened to me those first few times I wrote poems but then the going on with it is quite hard. There was a period when I renounced it when I was--oh, how old was I--about- right after I published my first book. I-- My life was a mess. I was separating from my then wife and I just decided this life of a poet is killing me, I have to do something else, but I couldn't. I thought of writing screenplays. I had a friend who was a director in Hollywood and I said, "I want to be a director," and he said, "That's impossible but try writing some screenplays." So I sat down and I started and I found it very boring so I just sat at my desk for a few months really doing nothing but keeping the same hours I did when I was writing poetry, and then I started writing again and I started writing in a new way and it was very exciting. It was actually after my second book, I should say.
 

Topic: The Poetic Life
C. K. Williams: The challenge is to do it all the time. The challenge is to sit there, basically, 'cause there are so many times when you just want to flee. It's not the life that I would have thought. It's more difficult in some ways. The actual act of writing is both more difficult and more rewarding. The-- You have sort of states of something like ecstasy in your writing when it goes well, when it goes specially well, and that's not something you can imagine when you're first starting out. It certainly wasn't what happened to me those first few times I wrote poems but then the going on with it is quite hard. There was a period when I renounced it when I was--oh, how old was I--about- right after I published my first book. I-- My life was a mess. I was separating from my then wife and I just decided this life of a poet is killing me, I have to do something else, but I couldn't. I thought of writing screenplays. I had a friend who was a director in Hollywood and I said, "I want to be a director," and he said, "That's impossible but try writing some screenplays." So I sat down and I started and I found it very boring so I just sat at my desk for a few months really doing nothing but keeping the same hours I did when I was writing poetry, and then I started writing again and I started writing in a new way and it was very exciting. It was actually after my second book, I should say.