Poetics

The story below is the closest I've ever come to writing a statement of poetics. I dashed this off immediately after receiving a pile of rejection slips on the same day early in my career. I was pissed. I was very pissed. I had the attitude, well fuck all of you literary editors if you're not interested in my work! I dashed this off, sent it immediately -- and it was accepted by THE LITERARY REVIEW, which went on to publish more of my work (they had been a major rejector of my work until this moment). In those days, the two places I wanted most to publish were THE LITERARY REVIEW and PRISM INTERNATIONAL, mainly because they had international content. I eventually succeeded in being published several times by each.

I think the moral is, Attitude wins. Passion wins.

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Fragments Before the Fall

The Literary Review (Summer, 1971)

Charles Deemer

I WALK a tightrope between two mountain tops over the Valley of the Waters of Fire. The waters are rising and all too soon the flames will disengage the embracing strands of fiber which hold me up, casting me to my fate below — incineration. I stand very still. To move would be to lose my balance and become cinder too soon.

I RECOGNIZE the voice: "Mummy, can I take this magazine to school? It has a story in it that is full of symbols, and Mr. Walker just loves symbols."

YOU, my friend, have not believed me from the beginning. But you say you do. And that makes you a phony.

THE MOUNTAIN from which I come is called the Mountain of the Sun. There I lived for many years, happy in my employment as an Accountant, happy with my wife Rose and with our two children, Fred (the boy) and Sally (the girl). My specialty in Accounting was figures. I added them, subtracted them and strung them in long columns in ledger books. It was as a result of such figuring, especially the adding of figures (and the figuring of adding), that I decided to begin the journey to the Mountain of the Moon across the valley. Whence the present.

IF YOU must think of me as a character in a work of fiction, I wish you would stop reading immediately. Ditto if you think of yourself as a reader of anything but the most literal truth.

WE, of course, had knowledge of the Mountain of the Moon. On clear days we could see it. Although I personally knew no one who had been across the valley, my analyst claimed to have a number of patients who had made the journey. They returned insane. In this context my analyst's reasons for discouraging my own journey become clear enough. Yet the figures pointed the way, and I obeyed them. My respect for mathematics, I must admit, is greater than my respect for psychology. As disciplines, you understand. As disciplines.  Read more