Close Reading-Sanders

To be a writer one can write from anywhere and gather inspiration from anyplace as long as he has a home inside his or herself and is open to be inspired by anything.

Being rooted and interested in your homeland. “For writers who are firmly in place, the metaphor of roots is inescapable. “Nothing can grow unless it taps into the soil,” William Carlos Williams tells us in his Autobiography. To put down roots does not mean, however, that one can no longer budge.”(159) The reference from William’s Autobiography is a statement that Sanders fully agrees with and the message is one that he is also writing about in his work: appreciating and being based in your homeland. Right after Sanders speaks about valuing where your “roots” are he says to leave and explore other places and things. This could seem like a contradiction but he mentions moving “in loops, out and back again, exploring our home ground…” So essentially Sanders suggest discovering your home and putting roots down, and then, leaving your roots where they are, exploring other regions if only so that you can appreciate your home more. Sanders compares this with what “owls or foxes or indigenous people” do. (159) They use their homeland to be productive, to make a living, play, and basically do what they do. For Sanders, like other authors, this would be writing, and so Sanders is proposing that one does not have to travel, but still can as long as one comes back, to live and make a living.

“Literature may come from the edge, of course; but to believe that it comes only from the edge is a damaging myth, an especially beguiling (deceiving) one for young writers who are insecure about their background and eager for sophistication.”(150) When Sanders says “damaging myth” it makes it sound like he once believed this, took action about it, and then realized that it was a “myth.” Later in his writing he states that he went away from his home earlier in his life to write because he thought that he had to get away to make “true art.” “When I began writing earnestly I was living in Cambridge, and I had the impression that true art could only be made far from the numbing influence of one’s home ground, in exile and rebellion.”(150.) Although he had that impression when he was younger he learned from it and now knows that he can write and draw inspiration from anywhere and most importantly from within himself.

Someone who can write from anywhere and gather inspiration from anyplace as long as he or she is centered inside his or herself and is open to be inspired by anything Sanders would say is a good writer. Does place matter when writing? Sanders might say no, that the writer matters more than the place. Delve deeper into the place you call home and you will find inspiration.