Writer And Human Poem by gershon hepner

The writer wrestles with the human traits
he daringly depicts,
and often, if the truth fails to amaze,
he changes facts to ficts.

The human wrestles with the writer's errors,
and feels himself aborted,
reflected in the writer's mirrors,
amusingly distorted.



Edna O'Brien, writing about James Joyce in “Joyce's Odyssey: The labors of ‘Ulysses’” (New Yorker, June 7,1999) , says:

Paradoxically, as writers wrestle with language to capture the human condition, they become callous, and cut off from the very human traits they so glisteningly depict. There can be no outer voice, no interruptions––only the inner drone, rhythmic, insistent, and struggling to make a living moment of both beauty and austerity. For Joyce, people were becoming more and more remote, and would eventually be specters.

6/5/99