4th Blog Response

Goldberg Writing Down the Bones

The Samurai

            I enjoyed reading “The Samurai” even though I don’t enjoy poems. “The Samurai” is a short story that deals with writing poetry. The narrator talks about releasing the inner Samurai part of their writing selves. The narrator says “So when you’re in the Samurai space, you have to be tough. Not mean, but with the toughness of truth. And the truth is that the truth can never ultimately hurt. It makes the world clearer and the poems much more brilliant.” This to me means that the inner samurai is meant to convey honesty when reviewing the works of others. That it may be hard to be honest when reviewing peoples work. It means don’t be mean but be truthful don’t sugar coat anything if you see a problem with the work express your concerns and help the writer better their work.

The narrator also talks about how you should write the way you want to write because that is where true passionate writing emanates.  The narrator says “They just mean we woke up, like on a Sunday morning after a late party Saturday night where we drank too much. Our eyes are open but we’re not very alert. It’s good to know where our writing is alive, awake, but it’s when our writing is burning through to brilliance that it finally becomes a poem or prose piece.”. These sentence to me, means that when we write about topics that don’t interest us we are not truly writing. When we write about our interests that’s when our writing has passion and becomes a true work of fiction. In the last paragraph of the story the narrator says “There’s enough bad writing in the world. Write one good line, you’ll be famous. Write a lot of lukewarm pieces, you’ll put people to sleep.  This means that you should follow your passion as a writer and not to write about what other people want you too because there are plenty of people doing that, but to follow your own writing dreams.

 

I Don’t Want to Die

            I also liked “I Don’t Want to Die” which is an interesting short story. The story talks about finding peace in writing and in our everyday lives. The story says that if we do not find peace when writing we will burn out from using up all of our energy and vitality.  When the narrator talks about the death of the Zen master Suzuki Roshi he says “Right before Suzuki Roshi’s death, Katagiri Roshi, an old friend, visited him. Katagiri stood by the bedside; Suzuki looked up and said, “I don’t want to die.” That simple. He was who he was and said plainly what he felt in that moment.” We must also do the same when it comes to our writing. We must plainly express what we feel through the words we write down on paper. That no matter where we might be we must accept who we are and not try and change it but express who we are through our writing.