{"id":8410,"date":"2015-04-14T08:00:04","date_gmt":"2015-04-14T08:00:04","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/ink.verticalplus.co.uk\/archive\/?p=8410"},"modified":"2015-03-31T12:16:07","modified_gmt":"2015-03-31T12:16:07","slug":"fred-pollack","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/fred-pollack\/","title":{"rendered":"Fred Pollack"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>&nbsp;<br \/>\n<strong>Correspondence<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>A friend, depressed.\u00a0 We argue over<br \/>\nthe term.\u00a0 He says he\u2019s functioning;<br \/>\nI say one can function, depressed.<br \/>\nProbably what counts is that he\u2019s arguing.<br \/>\nAnd another, a new friend or contact,<br \/>\na poet to whom I attack<br \/>\nthe \u201cautobiographical-elegiac\u201d<br \/>\nmode.\u00a0 Everyone does it, I tell him;<br \/>\nyou\u2019re better than that.\u00a0 And wait<br \/>\nfor him to tell me in effect he isn\u2019t.<br \/>\nAll this happens by email.<br \/>\nIf they were letters, and I had written<br \/>\ntwo letters today, it would be<br \/>\na good day for my biographers.<br \/>\nRealizing I\u2019ve thought that<br \/>\nmakes me feel guilty, talentless,<br \/>\na fraud as well as vain.<br \/>\nAnd as I press Send and<br \/>\nmy psychologizing and criticism,<br \/>\ncomposed with some strain<br \/>\nagainst the inherent tendency<br \/>\nof the medium, enter nothingness,<br \/>\nI think how one diagnosis,<br \/>\nerror, accident, bomb,<br \/>\nor insight can replace<br \/>\na universe of incalculable richness<br \/>\nwith one of incalculable poverty.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p><strong>Fred Pollack<\/strong> is the author of two book-length narrative poems, <em>The Adventure<\/em> and <em>Happiness,<\/em> both published by Story Line Press. A collection of poems, <em>A Poverty of Words<\/em>, forthcoming from Prolific Press. Other poems in print and online journals.\u00a0 Adjunct professor creative writing George Washington University, Washington, DC.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>&nbsp; Correspondence A friend, depressed.\u00a0 We argue over the term.\u00a0 He says he\u2019s functioning; I say one can function, depressed. Probably what counts is that he\u2019s arguing. And another, a new friend or contact, a poet to whom I attack the \u201cautobiographical-elegiac\u201d mode.\u00a0 Everyone does it, I tell him; you\u2019re better than that.\u00a0 And wait [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-8410","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-prose-poetry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8410","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8410"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8410\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8412,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8410\/revisions\/8412"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8410"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8410"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8410"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}