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This week’s Poetry Pairing matches “To a Young Writer,” a poem by Eleanor Ross Taylor, with an interview, “Tori Amos Still Wrestles With Her Muses,” by Joan Anderman.

After reading the poem and the interview, tell us what you think — or suggest other Times content that could be matched with the poem instead.



Poem

The Southern poet Eleanor Ross Taylor wrote poems that, as Adrienne Rich described, “speak of the underground life of women.” In 2010, Ms. Taylor won the Poetry Foundation’s Ruth Lilly Poetry Prize, one of the most prestigious awards given to American poets. She died in 2011.

To a Young Writer

By Eleanor Ross Taylor

If you like love and fame

Shop early, get your shots

Don’t spit, and pass with care —

Avoid it at all costs

Death, breakdown, despair;

They’ll fall on you,

Flock-peck to pieces wounded mouse:

I always thought so —

You know he lacked the drive

It had to come —

Dear friends consign you

To sanatorium, prison, and the pall.

No, keep your chair,

Tuck your wits in,

Say finally

I did outdure them all.

Times Selection Excerpt

In “Tori Amos Still Wrestles With Her Muses,” Joan Anderman asks the musician questions about creativity and aging:

Q.

Do the muses visit you with the same frequency and intensity they did 20 years ago?

A.

They can be quite ruthless, so I’m not going to say to you that it’s an easy collaboration, because it isn’t. It’s not as if I snap my fingers and greatness comes. A lot of my interpretation of what I’m hearing, sometimes I’m throwing 60, 70 percent of it away, because the magic isn’t there. It’s about having endurance. That’s important. There are ways to stimulate being prolific, and part of that is making pilgrimages, and being open to listening, changing up the routine. Take a different route to the coffee shop to see what you can see and hear. When we get in a routine we can become zombie-like and shut down. It’s about discipline. You have to push yourself.

Q.

You’re luckier than most, with a devoted fan base and vitality and a record contract. But getting older in the music business has got to be psychologically or spiritually trying. Correct me if I’m wrong.

A.

Yes, yes, yes, of course it is, but you have to discipline the mind, discipline the will. You have to be a warrior. You have to fight the belief system. It’s the only way or I become president of Victims Anonymous. And so we’re back to the work. The energy has to be put into making the work vital, and not settling for something that is just good, because there’s no room, don’t you see? When you’re in your 20s, there’s maybe a little room for you to not be at the top of your artistic game, if you look good on a magazine cover. When you’re not on the cover of the magazines anymore, then you realize that the work has to be great. And in order for that to happen we’re back to traveling, being open to stories, being open to creating whatever you need to create in order to stand back and say, “I respect the work with all my heart and soul.”

Q.

What have you gained?

A.

Listening. Becoming a good listener. I didn’t listen in my early 30s. I would have told you I listened, but it was all talking, talking, talking, explaining, blah blah blah. Output. But now I’m observing, listening, watching the older woman on the train, she catches your eye, she says, “Where are you going?” And you say, “I’m on my way to New York.” And she says, “Oh, I was there, when my husband was alive, 12 years ago.” And then if you just listen she will tell you one of her most intimate feelings, and I realize she’s just given me gold, and over the next few months the muses will say to me, “O.K., this has become part of our palette, part of our sonic palette. We will be building with these stories a new expression.” You have to remind yourself, you and me, whether it’s songs or books or articles, we are documenting what it is like for women in the late 20th, early 21st century, for ages to come. There’s a huge responsibility stepping into the fellowship of writers.

See more about the collaboration and find ideas for using any week’s pairing for teaching and learning.

Eleanor Ross Taylor’s “To a Young Writer” is from Poetry (May 2010).

