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For years, my favorite poet has been Billy Collins. I’ve shared his poetry before on this blog. As I’ve helped Lucy write her blog, we’ve warmed up our writing minds with poems from Billy. He helps me engage my heart in a way that isn’t too sentimental or affected. Anyway, today I came across this old poem called Purity and it’s one of my favorites. It’s great advice for writers, too. It’s about coming to the typewriter completely vulnerable. And not fake vulnerability like the hacks, the guys who talk about how bad they feel about how many women they’ve slept with (a sly way of bragging about sexual prowess) or about how humbled they are for having won the prestigious blogger of the week award from the local quilting circle (are you really humbled by that? You know you like those old ladies swooning over you) but the real thing, the vulnerability that costs you, that can even shrink your readership.

I had lunch with a friend last week that had quit drinking. He’s an artist, a writer, and I asked about his career. He’d just released a new project. He told me he was so busy trying not to drink that he really didn’t care whether or not his art succeeded. I liked that. It felt comforting to hear it. The art wasn’t what his life was about anymore, his life was about his life, and he wasn’t polling to see who was interested. He had more important battles to fight, and the writing was just an outlet.

So as writers, that’s the place we have to find. The place that has us sitting in front of our typewriters, our skin off and crumpled on the floor by our feet. Here’s that poem from Billy:

Purity

My favorite time to write is in the late afternoon,

weekdays, particularly Wednesdays.

This is how I go about it:

I take a fresh pot of tea into my study and close the door.

Then I remove my clothes and leave them in a pile

as if I had melted to death and my legacy consisted of only

a white shirt, a pair of pants, and a pot of cold tea.

Then I remove my flesh and hang it over a chair.

I slide it off my bones like a silken garment.

I do this so that what I write will be pure,

Completely rinsed of the carnal,

uncontaminated by the preoccupations of the body.

Finally I remove each of my organs and arrange them

on a small table near the window.

I do not want to hear their ancient rhythms

when I am trying to tap out my own drumbeat.

Now I sit down at the desk, ready to begin.

I am entirely pure: nothing but a skeleton at a typewriter.

I should mention that sometimes I leave my penis on.

I find it difficult to ignore the temptation.

Then I am a skeleton with a penis at a typewriter.

In this condition I write extraordinary love poems,

most of them exploiting the connection between sex

and death.

I am concentration itself: I exist in a universe

where there is nothing but sex, death and typewriting.

After a spell of this I remove my penis too.

Then I am all skull and bones typing into the afternoon.

Just the absolute essentials, no flounces.

Now I write only about death, most classical of themes

in language light as the air between my ribs.

Afterward, I reward myself by going for a drive at sunset.

I replace my organs and slip back into my flesh

And clothes. Then I back the car out of the garage

And speed through woods on winding country roads,

Passing stone walls, farmhouses, and frozen ponds,

All perfectly arranged like words in a famous sonnet.