On a Writer's Web of Words

and the "procreant urge of the world"

Photo by Torbjørn Helgesen on Unsplash

What writers spin on the page is as fragile and essential as any spider’s web hung among the hollyhocks. We want our web of words to be strong enough to snag the attention any passing reader, and alluring enough to keep them there while we wrap our storylines around them. We want to so bind her with our spell, or so drain her of her will, that she cannot leave until every last word has been lapped up.

But what happens next to that captivated reader is less spider- and more bee-like. The reader, fully sated by our story, begins the process of cross-pollination so essential to the propagation of literature, spreading seeds of our stories where more will grow. Bringing that nectar home to the storehouses of our own minds and imagination where that great queen bee, Mother Muse, turns it into the honey that feeds readers and writers alike.

So much pollen have I plundered over the years, so much nectar I have stolen to feed my stories. So many webs of words have caught and transformed me, devoured me, even as I devoured them.

Just his morning, for instance, I read a poem by Sherman Alexie about dreaming spiders, opening up a portal in my imagination that led to this—-my first Substack post.

I came here wanting a place to write and be read, to feed and be fed. A place to inspire and be inspired, and to connect with like-minded readers and writers. This too, a place to spin our webs, is as fragile and as essential to writers as it is to the spider. But neither of us have a real choice in the matter.

Writers may be born or made, but either way it is their lot to be filled with this essential urge to gather up all that makes life rich and meaningful and worthwhile and share it with all who are drawn to our glittering webs and pleasure gardens. We feed each other.

It’s the reciprocity of reading and writing that I love most of all. We are all so interdependent. Whitman knew this:

I celebrate myself, and sing myself,

And what I assume you shall assume,

For every atom belonging to me as good belongs to you.

What are writers but those who celebrate and sing themselves, and in that singing seek to pluck the strings of all that lies around us?

Urge and urge and urge,

Always the procreant urge of the world.

I felt that procreate urge when I created this painting, a flower garden to delight the senses. It came from the same place as this poem I wrote when sailing in Moorea. overcome and undone by the beauty around me:

Walking among flowers / drowning in scent / petals assault me/ cool and bent . . . .

It’s a poem about reciprocity, beauty and brutality, unmaking and remaking.

I’ll share the whole poem in my next post and how I came to write it.

If you would, leave a little nectar in a comment below to keep me well fed till next we meet, and I’ll try to do the same for you.

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