Acrostic Quotes
Fox-Trot-9

27. William Faulkner

There on the blank page (white as new-fallen snow from
Heaven) looms the fate of a neurotic writer on the
Edge of insanity as he strives in his mind (like the strivings

Of Hercules on his penitent labors) to settle his wayward thoughts.
Nothing (not his sleeping loved ones, nor the whisperings of a
Lonely night wind outside his office window) has
Yet to quell the thundering storm inside his mind or

Temper the quavering metal of his thunderous
Heart, for the things of the outside world are nothing compared to the
Inner turmoil of his heaving breast, heaving for the first word to
Navigate its way from his heart to to his pen-holding hand,
God willing! He takes his pen and places it onto the paper

Where the initial actions of the writer's profession quivers
On the page with the first word, "Through the" . . . until he stops
Right in the act, as if a thought or (God, forbid) self-doubt
Threatens the shuddering ghost of his story,
Halting it there on the cusp of . . .

What? Through the what? He ponders that fragment
Rising and fading on the tip of his tongue, wondering what,
In in the name of Christ, his story is going to be about!
That is the question, like Shakespeare's titular Hamlet, caught
In the middle of a moment's moment of hesitation
Needing an answer to the conundrum before his muse
Gives him more words to write on the page. So here,

As he ponders the subject of his story, lies the
Beating heart of his struggles to write that first sentence
Out of the dark ether of his wandering thoughts
Under the whispering lull of a lonely night,
There in his study, thinking and wondering and . . .

It's the heart of the matter that he wants to get, like a
Speaker before a crowd finding his words

Through the static of a blanked-out mind.
Honestly, why does it have to be so damn hard to
Enter that fairy realm? Why is it so damn

Hard to take the plunge and write the words
Under the lulling whispers of a soothing night? Any
Man can write the story of things he has heard
About, but it takes a man of courage and determination
Not to kneel to other people's expectations and

Hammer out a story that only he can write, but
Even if he can't (even if his efforts fall short of his lofty goals
And fade into the twilight of yet another unfinished story)
Right now he must wage the struggle, raise his banner
To the sky, and charge into the fight and

Into the middle of things, where all things
Need a beginnings in order to have their endings,

Come what may! It's in the heart of the matter, here
On the stage of his wandering (and wondering) mind, with
Nothing but his own doubts to gaze at in the mirror of his past
Failures throwing their shadows from the blank page, mocking him
Like all the cruel people in his life who have doubted him, here
In the boiling cauldron of his doubts and hopes and fears
Casting about his wandering thoughts against
The stirrings of his quivering heart! It's

Where the heart beats, in conflict with itself, tempest-tossed
In the raging squalls of his past literary calamities,
That he finally embraces the chaos of his muse and
Heeds the shuddering virtues of her wisdom, for it's

In that very chaos, where words and phrases and clauses
Tumble in waves from his scribbling pen, that creates
Stories worth writing about and reading about from start to
End, from cover to cover, from the first word and the first
Line to the last line and the last word,
For . . .

The only thing worth writing about is the human heart in conflict with itself.
―William Faulkner

(To be continued...)

A/N: William Faulkner was one of America's greatest writers, best known for his stream-of-consciousness narrative style, who had many of his novels and short stories set in the fictional Yoknapatawpha County, based on Lafayette County, Mississippi, where he spent most of his life. He is also know for his literary rivalry with fellow American writer Earnest Hemingway, who partook in many jabs at him in print for something comment Faulkner said about Hemingway.

Meter: Free verse
Rhyme Scheme: None