A BLANK PAGE

March 7, 2021 

          As I began planning a new sequel and scribbling notes on the notepads throughout the house before facing the first blank page, by coincidence I came upon two other writers talking about the blank pages we face.
          In the December 2020 issue of the AARP Bulletin, there was an entertaining interview with Margaret Atwood. Here’s an excerpt from the Q&A:

What do you think is the biggest misconception about creativity?
I think one of them is that only geniuses have it. But, in fact, everybody has it because it’s a human thing. It’s just that people employ their creativity in different ways. Some people write. Some people knit. Some people make music. But it all has to do with our human capacity for invention and for seeing things from different points of view.

Are there aspects of your writing that become easier as you age?
No, I’m afraid not. It’s the same blank page with nothing on it. Everybody has that page, and everybody has that moment of having to begin.

          In an article the January 18th (2021) issue of Publishers Weekly, “When in Rome” by Victoria Scanlan Stefanakos, thriller-writer Lisa Scottoline was interviewed about her latest novel, Eternal, her first historical novel, which “marks a departure for her in nearly every way.” The article concluded with her saying,
“I think all of us writers are in a room cheering ourselves on. Whether you’ve published 30 books or no books, it’s always the same: there’s a blank page and a challenge, and you need to meet it.”
When I think of blank pages, I always think of John Ciardi’s poem “The Gift.” I’ve quoted from it here before. An excerpt:

In 1945, when the keepers cried kaput
     Josef Stein, poet, came out of Dachau
     Like half a resurrection, his other half
eighty pounds still in their invisible grave . . . 

[He recovers and resumes his life.]

   . . . He returned to his post in the library,
         drank his beer,
      published three poems in a French magazine,

and was very kind to the son who at last was his.
   In the spent of a night he wrote three propositions:
That Hell is the denial of the ordinary.
That nothing lasts.
   That clean white paper waiting under a pen

Is the gift beyond history and hurt and heaven.

Poets and poetry. To end on a light note, let’s now sing a belated happy birthday to Edna St. Vincent Millay, who was born on February 22, 1892.  This year on that day, a Maine TV news program celebrated the occasion with her saucy “First Fig” poem on the screen:
    My candle burns at both ends;
             It will not last the night;
                    But, ah, my foes, and oh, my friends—
             It gives a lovely light!

And I got out my copy her Collected Poems (on the flyleaf written “To Ruthie, Love from Don 1/19/57”). I found the section from her “A Few Figs from Thistles” collection and checked my memory of “Second Fig”:

Safe upon the solid rock the ugly houses stand;
Come and see my shining palace built upon the sand!