REMEMBERING
ALEX
A century ago, Robert Frost wrote his classic
poem, “The Road Not Taken” and a generation of writers, myself included, lived
by Frost’s credo, follow your heart.
Alex Blackburn, a distinguished
professor and award-winning writer, asks us to think about Frost’s mystical
road in his book The Fire Within: Reflections on the Literary Imagination.
Alex puts it like this --
Unless
all roads lead to “planetization” there will be no forsaken road left to be
sorry about.
In addition, Alex speaks, quite
frankly, about how hard it is, on top of everything else, just to be a writer.
He speaks of the hazards of writing, living, teaching, earning a living, and publishing:
“When
inflation crippled England in 1968, I, broke again after having written 600
godawful pages, returned to big-time teaching, as they say, only big time
became full-time/part-time with no more time for writing, and still not enough
time to earn a living…”
In The
Fire Within Alex speaks heartfully of how, “…in serious writing,
self-discovery, not self-expression,
we need to surpass our real experience. This is the point where imagination
comes into play.”
Alex then discusses Frank Waters,
author of The Man Who Killed the Deer.
Waters, Alex states, was a proponent of “…a coming world of consciousness … a sense of
embracing the totality of Earth.” Alex defines this mystical power as “a new
kind of love.”
For those who find this a little
ephemeral, Alex says, “It’s necessary to “take into account we are all in the
same boat.”
The problem is, are we floating or
sinking?
The
Fire Within helps to
explain that this question can be answered by helping others, by reaching out,
by writing from the heart as well as the head. Maybe that is why Alex became a
great teacher: he was always there for others, not just himself.
We need to hear this now more than
ever.
For, in my mind, in today’s world, the
boat isn’t just floating or sinking, We are.
Thanks for pointing this out to me,
Alex, old friend.
