Bob Vivian is one of the best creative writing teachers we know.
To celebrate National Day on Writing —which is October 20th— we bring you his short essay, “Pen”.
And of all the pens in the world this black ink one suddenly most
precious, most central and most lovely, the one I hold in my hand not
my hand, any hand, any hand at all that holds this black ink one
gently pressed down into forever, how dear the black liquor with
which men and women write as Johnson once wrote, though he did
not include women which I include here now and always, I exclude no
one, not even the monster of my dreams, always from black ink into
vapor and utterance, I exclude no one from the doorway of pen and I a
pen myself writing almost nonsense, gibberish, Motorola, my love,
my dearest foremost self, I most lascivious of verse and receiver of
verse, poem is the dark and light of myself, poem most high and
down in the gutter where I eat a raw radish like a shameless tart and
how even now within these words I can barely read them or make
them out for poor, poor penmanship that should shudder me into
holy moaning and prison cell though I am in deep, keening love with
steelhead, yes, I say it here, great fish, and ink, steelhead that are ink
unto themselves of great rivers and lakes, ink of the most chromatic
kind and metal head as I shiver here at this desk and whisper river,
river, river, ink of my blood as a quaking, wide-awake fool who is
faithful only to fish and poem and the fish that are poems and I
forsake all morality and grammar and tremble only with a pen and a
fly rod and once in a while a chalk board, mighty slate, where I fail
my students again and again and again though I am in love with their
youth and beauty, I am in love with pre-dawn poems, I am in love,
yes, with Russian poetry and don’t know how to rock it and page after
page of glasnost, Siberia, Walt Whitman, halleluiah, who loves you,
baby, Celtic crosses, the overgrown mossy kind, and one frayed
dictionary more thumbed upon, thumbed through than any Playboy
as if I have been making love to the whole English language and I
have and I have and I will and I am salmon struck, trout blinded,
spawn lover, instrument of crazy verse, official goner, fucked up seer
of vast eternal grasses, here now then gone forever, wind-blasted
root of a verb, bye-bye, hasta la vista, no one will ever love you more
with three-day stubble and dance move, holy pivot, did you see the
blue winged olives in the cold, cold drizzle, I am going there, my
hands a-tremble, holy fuck, one fish rising enough to save the whole
world.”