Material for Writing? (Jen Intro) (06/15/2019)

Is Everything Material for Your Writing? | The Weekly Atticus

June 15, 2019

This letter is a recap of the week at

Atticus Review

, along with some extras.

A few years ago, when I was still living in Israel, I sat each week with two female friends in what’s called in Hebrew, a chavruta, a pair or small group formed to study Talmud or other Jewish texts on a regular basis. The experience was brief, but it provided me with two cherished takeaways. One was my friend Sara, who I first met in the chavruta and who I still learn with informally today, and the second is the word ineffable. We were studying a text written by rabbi and Jewish theologian Abraham Joshua Heschel. I’m a little embarrassed to admit to a writing community that in my late 30s I had yet to happen upon the word. But as soon as Sara told me its meaning — that which is beyond description, or inexpressible — I fell in love with it. “To become aware of the ineffable is to part company with words,” Heschel writes. “The tangent to the curve of human experience lies beyond the limits of language. The world of things we perceive is but a veil.” Isn’t that gorgeous? Since then, I’ve secretly harbored the desire to write the ineffable: to convey to you the fleeting experience of my deja vu, to call to your mind the fading memory of my dream. It seems to me, an essayist, quite the challenge. Achieving this would be a peak act of creation. Yet, I also wonder if this isn’t already the role of poetry: to evoke without describing, to find a way to communicate with another wordlessly with words? Certainly, poets have more experience with meeting this particular challenge than essayists. And I imagine the draw, for me at least, to lyric essay, is knowing that if I am ever going to write the ineffable, it will be in hybrid form, if in form at all. But, tell me, is it hubris to even try? To attempt makes me feel a bit like the Nazis in Raiders of the Lost Ark who were brazen enough to gaze at that which emerged from the Ark of the Covenant, but whose faces melted as a result. Perhaps there are some experiences, some feelings that we should just leave alone; grateful for the awe, moved by the wonder. Does everything need to be raw material for our writing?I read once that the three main reasons why writers write are to persuade, to inform, or to entertain. What’s blatantly missing from that short list is that at its most basic, to write is to connect with another. To write the ineffable seems to me an attempt at connecting to source, to consciousness, to the divine, to the Inner Voice (capital I, capital V) — and to then be a channel for that energy so it may be shared by another. In other words, to humbly lift the veil. I think I’m ready to try, with the deep hope that my face won’t melt in the process. If you’re ready to try, too, make sure to send some of those attempts on over to Atticus Review. We’d love to read them.Thanks for reading. We’re glad you’re here.Jen MaidenbergColumns Editor

ATTICUS NEWS

Write some bare and honest stuff...Then send it to our 2nd Annual CNF contest...Deadline is July 21st. First prize is $400!Judge: Ira Sukrungruang.

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