that the texts in question are merely non-sensical, that they have no “mean-
ing.” On the contrary, “you can only use yourself in the most truthful way
possible at the time” (2). The word truth crops up again and again. “If it’s
done with truth and love,” we read in a slightly later letter, “and no wish to
pro¤t, in any sense, then it will take shape. The ¤nal thing I ¤nd in any
art that moves me is the clear message ‘there is no competition because I
am myself and through that the whole’ ” (18). Each artwork, once made, is
uniquely itself. At the same time, the poet can never quite achieve what he
wants to: “I look at the poems and they make a museum of fragments of
truth. And they smell of vanity, like the hunter’s trophies on the wall.... I
have never reached the true centre, where art is pure politics” (22–23).
Art at its most uncompromising would be “pure politics,” the will to
change one’s entire world. But this poet also knows that at the true center—
his “true centre”—there is that hole in the heart we read about through-
out. To “give it straight” like a turned on radio, “you can only use yourself
in the most truthful way possible at the time.” It is in this context that we
must understand Raworth’s emphasis on minute literal description of daily
routine. Yaddo, the writers’ colony, is a good site for the practice of self-
discipline, for there are only so many options. Consider the following passage:
I’ve trained myself (now that’s a ridiculous phrase) during the past
week to wake at ¤ve to seven. At seven o’clock I start running past the
garage, down through the woods and around the lakes. I am back at
the house at 7:15. I wash, make my bed, and walk to the garage building
for breakfast. Each day I have a glass of orange juice, corn®akes with
cold milk, two scrambled eggs and two cups of coffee. Then I leave any
letters I’ve written in the basket by the door and collect any that have
arrived. I walk back to the house, read the mail in my bedroom, go
down to the kitchen to collect my lunchpail and thermos, then walk to
my cabin. There I clean the ashes from the stove, light the ¤rst ¤re with
the paper bags yesterday’s food was wrapped in (plus any scraps from
my wastepaper basket) and some kindling from a cardboard carton. I
then read my mail again, by which time the kindling has caught and
I can put a couple of logs into the stove from the rack in the corner. I
usually look out of the window for a while, at the trees and birds and
squirrels. I crumple up whatever cake or cookie is in the lunchpail, and
throw it out the door. Then I listen to the traf¤c for a while. I can just
see the highway through the trees. After that I sweep the ®oor and
write letters. At four o’clock I take my lunch things back to the kitchen
and read in my bedroom until ¤ve thirty, when I go down to the
kitchen, make a drink, and take it into the library. Dinner is at six232 Chapter 12