What if I just stop writing?
Hounded by self-doubt, many writers (including me) carry this question with them like a dark secret, something impossible to dispense with entirely, as much as they might want to. Now and then it surfaces, accompanied by deep anxiety or by a burgeoning sense of relief–perhaps both–depending on the circumstances.
In her equally harrowing and illuminating book–a hybrid of fiction, poetry, and literary criticism–Rebecca van Laer explores why one young woman turned a What if? to a fait accompli, ceasing to write poetry because, in her words, it could “help me no longer.” The result is a fascinating read, one that confronts an uncomfortable reality: although personal traumas can drive, and sometimes become inseparable from, creative work, this relationship isn’t necessarily healthy or sustainable, however productive it might be.
The ex-poet is Charlotte, and as the book begins, she ponders why, in her early twenties, she stopped writing after producing a “three-year deluge of verse. … I’m not sure where, exactly, I began running from rhyming and writing. And so I decided to go back.” More specifically, she rereads poems she’d written at the time (several of which are presented in the book) and revisits memories and emotions associated with them. As she does so, she engages in a sort of self- and literary-analysis inspired by the writing of Michel Foucault, an analysis aimed at transforming “what is no longer useful,” thereby freeing oneself.
Although Charlotte had a trying childhood–her mother was known for her “rages” and eventually kicked Charlotte out of her house–the traumas that end up being the main drivers of her poetry concern her fraught relationships with a series of men. Even as these relationships fall apart, she continues to search for a love that will bring an end to her loneliness or salve her emotional wounds. Eventually, though, she comes to believe “that what I wanted, really, was to feel sharply the cold of unrequited love.”
At the time of these relationships, Charlotte had tried to address the pain of them through poetry. But when she revisits these poems years later, she sees flaws in them both as literary works and as coping mechanisms.
At one point, for example, Charlotte returns to her poem “Thinking with the Skin,” which she’d written about her most significant, and traumatic, relationship at the time, with a man who became angered whenever she cried (the crying being just one sign of her ongoing depression, which she’d tried to manage with psychiatric medications, and also alcohol and drugs).
Now, the poem strikes Charlotte as “incredibly sentimental and cloying.” Also, she observes: “I entreat my lover to try and know me intimately; that I can tell him where I hold my pain and why, or he can ask me. … I didn’t know, then, that telling someone the source of your pain doesn’t make it any easier for them to cope with your display of it.”
In a larger sense, Charlotte comes to realize that any effort to write her way through, and out of, the suffering that accompanies these trying relationships is doomed to fail. She also raises bigger questions about writing in general and poetry in particular that feel relevant beyond the scope of this book.
For example, at one point Charlotte addresses the argument that poetry is “‘impossible,’ that individual poems can never live up to the task of Poetry writ large.” In response to this she observes: “But I wonder whether it is really the impossibility of the art that leads so many poets to put down their pens. Perhaps they have simply lost the unselfconsciousness and faith in the written word needed to ‘be’ a poet. Or perhaps it is ‘being a poet’ that proves impossible.”
Here and elsewhere in the book, Charlotte invites us to take a deeper, more critical look into the creative process, and into how or why it can fail.
To many writers, the notion of no longer writing may be unthinkable. A major reason for this, as Charlotte suggests, is that writing can become inseparable from one’s identity. Consequently, her decision to stop writing poetry feels as courageous as it is necessary.
So what does the “no longer useful” (i.e., poetry) get transformed into for Charlotte? That’s still to be determined, it seems. The ending of this innovatively crafted book is far from neat or pat, literally offering more questions than answers. This feels like an honest and fitting conclusion to the story of a young woman who has so rigorously interrogated her past and her choices. But I, personally, have a good feeling about Charlotte’s future. The questions open up multiple possibilities for her, which to my mind are the very essence of hope.
Would My Pick be Your Pick?
If you're interested in ________, the answer may be "Yes":￭ Explorations of the creative process
￭ Journeys of self discovery
￭ Poetry
￭ Literary criticism
