How Coming Out Changed Maureen Seaton's Writing

[Prestidigitweeze]

"(I've Had) The Time of My Life," by Maureen Seaton

I'm not certain I connect with Seaton's poetry (since for me, compression is important no matter how many sex/death revelations one has), but I love the exuberance that her coming out seems to have lent to her writing -- how even her sense of form changed once she knew who she really was.

[crich70]

Makes sense that her writing would change I imagine. Before she may have been trying to deny (even to herself) who she was inside and so her writing reflected that. I've often heard it said that writing is autobiographical in nature. The writing reflects the writer.

[kennyc]

Well, poets should write truth as they experience it.
If she was not doing that then she was not being a true poet.

[crich70]

Originally Posted by kennyc

Well, poets should write truth as they experience it.
If she was not doing that then she was not being a true poet.

To an extent we all hide who we really are though I think kennyc. The word person comes from the Greek word Persona which literally means 'mask,' and all of us wear various masks in life. Some of them we aren't even aware of ourselves. I mean the same man who is a hard taskmaster at work may show a totally different face to the world in his own home or vice versa, and show yet another face to those he socializes with during recreational activities. And I wonder how many of us ever truly know ourselves as well as we think we do.

[kennyc]

I disagree. As i said. It also applies to writers but is dependant on what they write.

Let me just add that if a writer ..particularly a poet...is not writing honestly from everything they know to be true in their heart of hearts they should find another job....like politician, lawyer, or CEO.

[crich70]

Originally Posted by kennyc

I disagree. As i said. It also applies to writers but is dependant on what they write.

Let me just add that if a writer ..particularly a poet...is not writing honestly from everything they know to be true in their heart of hearts they should find another job....like politician, lawyer, or CEO.

I wasn't saying that writer's shouldn't be honest in their writing kennyc, just that everyone hides part of themselves from sight and even from themselves. Very few of us really know ourselves as well as we think we do. For example some may think a given minority is given too easy a ride in life and be amazed that others think that they are a bigot. They don't see themselves that way. The old saying "I think therefore I am" only goes so far. We know that we exist but we don't really know ourselves. Now and then an event happens in our lives and we are forced to face some trial and we learn a bit more about ourselves as a result.

[kennyc]

I know that, you didn't address the topic or my comment, you went off on some tangent.
And again I disagree with you.

Writers in order to be honest must know themselves. It has nothing to do with masks or faces. The job of a writer is to know himself.....and put it on paper....if he doesn't he is not being honest, true and is not doing what a writer should do, which is what I said that started this.

[kennyc]

If you are writing for the market or not writing what is true to you then you should get a new job, politician, lawyer, CEO.

The poet mentioned here already knew herself but was not being honest and (at least according to the op) harmed her writing.

I'm heard this over and over and over.

In order to be a writer (especially a poet) one must remove all the masks. Otherwise they are wasting everyone's time.

[Prestidigitweeze]

Originally Posted by kennyc

Well, poets should write truth as they experience it.
If she was not doing that then she was not being a true poet.

According to Seaton, she didn't discover the truth until middle age, which is exactly when she came out. Before that, she seems to have believed she was straight. She talks about having being opened up to sexuality itself in her late thirties by a man, then discovering her true sexuality some time after that.

It sounds as though she was truthful before -- just unaware of her real orientation.

She might even agree with you that she wasn't a fully formed poet until she knew herself as a woman, given what she's written about the changes in her work.

[kennyc]

Originally Posted by Prestidigitweeze

According to Seaton, she discover know the truth until she was in her late thirties, which is exactly when she came out. Before that, she seems to have believed she was straight, and of being opened up to sexuality itself in her late thirties by a man. She talks about discovering her true sexuality after that, relatively late in life.

It sounds as though she was truthful before, just unaware of her real orientation.

She might even agree with you that she wasn't a fully formed poet until she knew herself as a person, given what she's written about the changes in her work.

Yeah, I'm not doubting that, nor that people change, what I am saying is that writers and poets must look into themselves and know themselves to produce anything worthwhile. She was fooling herself or had not truly looked before is what it sounds like to me. In fact maybe even that she was fooling herself consciously or unconsciously. In any case I will check out more of her work. Thanks for bringing this up.

I also think I'm have more of a reaction to this myself due to my own recent revelations in my approach to writing which I've written about in another thread.

[kennyc]

BTW here is the original publication and a poem to go with it from PANK mag:

http://www.pankmagazine.com/maureen-seaton/

[Prestidigitweeze]

Originally Posted by kennyc

I also think I'm have more of a reaction to this myself due to my own recent revelations in my approach to writing which I've written about in another thread.

Link, mayhaps?

[Prestidigitweeze]

Originally Posted by crich70

Makes sense that her writing would change I imagine. Before she may have been trying to deny (even to herself) who she was inside and so her writing reflected that. I've often heard it said that writing is autobiographical in nature. The writing reflects the writer.

I've often read about coming out and what it means to the person, but rarely to the writing. There ought to be a book (which I've occasionally considered writing) about the many literary innovations that have come from the need for earlier writers to encode their sexuality -- how, in order not to be pilloried, so many gay writers have had to learn to confect literary ciphers. Famous examples of technical innovation arguably wrought from secrecy: The novels of Raymond Roussell and Marcel Proust; dual-purpose female characters in plays by Tennessee Williams; the use of artifice in Yukio Mishima; the use of obscurity and adoption of multiple voices obscuring the individual author's in John Ashbery, etc., etc. Ashbery has said that classical music (and by extension, his own writing) is like "a philosophical argument in which the terms are not known."

Some have said that Christina Rossetti's "The Goblin Market" is a veiled expression of same-sex desire, but I wonder whether she'd have been mortified by that interpretation.