I’m not sure these are the same question. By “write for,” I mean Who are you trying to impress? Who do you picture as being out there in the darkened seats of the audience? Your peers? Critics? Friends and family? Committee members? Editors? By “write to,” I mean Is your writing directed at other human beings, some of whom may not be involved in the literary-industrial complex? If not, you’re probably writing for someone. “For,” in the sense that the court poet was writing for the king; if he addressed the king in writing or song, the address was designed to enhance the king’s prestige – to be heard by the court – and to publicly ingratiate the poet with the king. But ones writes a letter or email to someone – it is a communication delivered to a private address, to a particular person or group, rather than a set-piece designed for public broadcast. Writing For is essentially writing for institutions – and institutional rewards and awards. In the poetry world, in particular, since there is no audience or royalties to speak of, gatekeepers are of primary importance. If you are trying to “make it” as a poet, in terms of institutional acceptance (including getting a tenured professorship), you have to Write For the institution. In a weird way, Emily Dickinson was Writing For – for posterity, in her case. She tied up her poems like letters, but they were letters “to the world,” not letters to Rev. Higginson or to her sister-in-law (though she certainly sought their approbation, too – sent them poems with her letters – and both helped to make D’s posthumous reputation). Is it possible “to Write To” someone, qua literature? I mean, intentionally? There are certainly exchanges of correspondence that qualify. But often correspondence is private in name only (Seneca’s letters to Lucilius, e.g.); and if they really are private, then any public approbation would be fortuitous. What does all this have to do with climate change and societal collapse? Well, if publishing and higher education keep going the way they’re going, and if CO2 & methane emissions keep going the way they’re going, then there’s not going to be much reason “to write for.” The audience will have been dispersed, so to say. Do you keep on writing (or composing) poetry anyway? If so, your reader is likely to be more local – somebody you know already, for instance in your family and friends, your migrant group, your compound. And this is indeed the readership many poets write for already – in numerous Poetry Societies and Writer’s Clubs across the U.S., for instance. But it means foregoing the need for FAME. A name, Marcus Aurelius says, is an empty sound and an echo, one that never satisfies the living and means nothing to the dead. And those who remember one’s name will themselves pass away. Maybe it’s best to write in an epistolary mode, no matter what one writes – and actually give the text to the addressee. Perhaps the addressee should decide whether to publish it or not (it’s their property now, after all). In any case, I suspect that, in future, writing will be a lot more immediate, ephemeral, and local than “literary” writing is today. Writing that one can take seriously, anyway.
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June 2021
Kristin Prevallet Author/Editor
I'm a writer & teacher in Lawrence, Kansas who actually believes the scientists. I wrote a book of poems called Of Some Sky that seems to have something to do with all this. |