February 8, 2010

Anne Boyer, Art is War (Mitzvah Chaps, 2008).

Two interesting things about Boyer’s approach to writing:

1. “The advantage of writing down Ideas is that these Ideas neither have to be one’s own [. . .], nor is one required to embrace, understand, or even necessarily be interested in the Ideas one writes down” (“A Brief Essay on the Writing Down of Ideas”).

2. I like the participatory nature of her “Difficult Ways to Publish Poetry” project, because it invites readers to continue where she leaves off, coming up with other, unlikely, and difficult ways to publish poetry themselves. In this way, it’s a very generous project.