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Louise Glück on writer's block

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Louise Glück on writer's block

“I think everything good in my own work I owe to endurance.”

Mason Currey
Oct 16, 2023
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Louise Glück on writer's block

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Welcome to the latest issue of Subtle Maneuvers. Last week, I spent two mornings writing a lengthy second installment of my #blocktober series, and then yesterday I went to re-read it before scheduling the email and—I just wasn’t feeling it. It all seemed so … effortful. Or like a bunch of answers searching for a question. So I decided to scrap it and, instead, present three paragraphs from the poet Louise Glück, who died last week at age 80, and whose thoughts on writer’s block and the writing life have been bubbling in my head all weekend.


SILKWORM NOTIONS
Shared on Twitter by the poet Claire Hong

THE YEARNING AND FAILING PARTS
Shared on Twitter by the writer GennaRose Nethercott

LIVING IN YOUR INCAPACITY
From a 2014 interview, shared on Twitter by the poet Eugenia Leigh

Thanks for reading, as always. This silkworm will be back in two weeks, maybe with the issue I already wrote but didn’t send or maybe with a different one. In the meantime, I would love to hear your thoughts on diligence, endurance, yearning, failing, reprimands, your favorite Louise Glück poems (I like “Visitors from Abroad”), and related matters.

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Louise Glück circa 1978, via the University of Arizona Poetry Center
In her mid-seventies, via Henri Cole

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Louise Glück on writer's block

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Louise Glück on writer's block

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Silvio Castelletti
Writes The Semi-Serious View
Oct 16Liked by Mason Currey

"But tell yourself the well is filling up" is one of the most inspiring, refreshing, energetic, positive phrases I've ever read on the writing block subject. Thank you for sharing this.

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Shelley
Oct 16Liked by Mason Currey

Thank you for this. Deeply consoling: “I regret being unable to occupy that state constantly, but to be there at all seems a marvel beyond all others”

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