Passing it on

Heard from a Brazilian journalism student, writing for permission to use my essay The New Hyperdrama in a paper she's doing on computer games. This sort of thing happens reasonably often and is one of the more satisfying "side dishes" of being a writer. In an extreme case, we have G. Sirc finding an old essay of mine, English Composition As A Happening, and getting inspired to write a book of the same title (and this, decades later). From a review:

The current conservative trend in composition is analyzed allegorically by Geoffrey Sirc in this book-length homage to Charles Deemer’s 1967 article, in which the theories and practices of Happenings artists (multi-disciplinary performance pioneers) were used to invigorate college writing.

We hope our writing matters to someone, and now and again it does. This is why it's important that the work be available, which of course the net makes possible more vigorously than ever, including work that is not very good. Anyone can put anything on line. But at the same time, I'm sure brilliant things can be found in the dark corners of cyberspace.

For those of us who are not commercial writers, reward comes from "passing it on," from having the work referenced in other work by other writers, in inspiring others to continue the journey or to begin similar ones.

As Norman O. Brown wrote, "The proper response to poetry is not criticism but poetry."