How I Became an Author

By : Klaus Høeck

Then one day in nineteen sixty-four it happened. A great springtide burst in my head. And in less than one week I wrote my first collection of poems and realized that I was no good at anything else (for I had tried, after all) than writing poems. This first collection was spontaneous, without the systems that are so characteristic of my later poetry. It has perished, disappeared or been swallowed up in later poems. But the die was cast, there was no way back. Of course a collection of poems does not emerge from pure nothingness. I had read poems both at school and later, as I have described it. And the swift and sure way in which I wrote those first poems was due to the other characteristic I have mentioned: namely over-sensitivity, linguistic idiosyncrasy. A real poet needs only to have read a single poem and in certain cases only a few lines in order to capture a whole linguistic universe. As a piece of curious information I can mention that at the time I avoided reading poems by Ole Sarvig, because everyone was accused of plagiarizing him. But it didn’t help. I had read a line or a part of a poem, in a review, perhaps. And that was enough. Not because Ole Sarvig was particularly important to me. But as an example. A real poet never plagiarizes, by the way. He steals, as Eliot put it, to use for his own talent and his own poetic universe. A poet is, as I have indicated, ready right from the start. He doesn’t need to learn to be a poet. What he lacks is the fine polishing of his technique. To see how other poets have tackled the problems he himself is struggling with. And as I have never hidden my light under a bushel, I have been able to learn from the best of them. Enter into the required elective affinities. How that happens is something that cannot be described. I would say that the right books fall into one’s hands at the right times, if one just takes a chance and instead of depending on other people to tell one what to read, just makes one way through poetry and literature haphazardly. It also seems important to me not to read too much. But to hold on when one is getting warm. It was la Cour’s later poetry (not the diary) that preoccupied me. But soon my attention switched to Pound, Eliot, Perse and Neruda. All poets who have written powerful, large-scale works. And I swore that I would also write large, inclusive collections and follow that tradition, which is as old as poetry itself. A vow I have kept. I shall not go into the advantages and disadvantages of writing poetry in large units, but simply mention that that is the way my poetic temperament is now held together.

The text is an excerpt from Klaus Høeck’s contribution to the book Hvordan jeg blev forfatter (How I Became an Author), Borgen 1997.

Translated by David McDuff