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2005-11-02, 10:00 a.m.:
I'm on a little vacation from poetry, the writing of it. Last week went by, firstly, in a flurry of simulsub muddles which I had to work very hard to repair, writing extra charming letters on too little coffee in the morning. Then there was the Great Prose Change Operation of 2005, in which I copied each even somewhat likely poem I had then unleashed myself all hell's-bells-like with the backspace. Everything was unversified and then prosified. It was an interesting exercise because, especially for the poems that did not like wearing prose as their new dress, I could really see the weak spots, the lulls in musicality (if musicality there was to begin with), the missteps and misfires. The dulllllll stuff. So a lot of excising and tidying ensued. Entire lines, stanzas fell victim to this process, and that was not a bad thing. I felt really good, ultimately, about those pieces that are meant to be line-broken. Long story short, I spent two full days on these revisions. I was also working on two brand-new things and about three semi-brand-new things at the same time. (And reading all the issues of Forklift, Ohio that came in the mail. I must say that the small sizes are perfect pocket stashes for yard excursions.) And now I'm heartily sick of all my stuff and have about 8,000 pages to print out again and examine. And ... have started writing prose poems, which is something I never thought I'd say/write/mean. I also *almost* wrote a poem with a footnote, and not the good kind, if you know what I mean. I stopped myself just in time. I had a revelation, out on the balcony braving the windiest nights we�ve ever known in this house, about a poem (�The Voice Lesson�) that is my most damaged darling of all. I�ve been trying to write this damn poem for about 8 years and I swear it gets only worse and worse. I wouldn�t change a thing on page one; after that it all goes downhill. It�s enough to make me hate singing. I wish there were a damaged darlings swap (a la Swink) in place for poems like these. I�ll give you mine, you give me yours, we do with them whatever we like round robin-style. Free of the burden of trying to produce something �good� or come to terms with how very badly the brilliant vision has manifested itself on the page. Then we give them back, for the purposes of edification, or perhaps, finally, just for proper burial. Or, in the event of absolute genius, we publish them under both our names. If anyone was actually reading this blog, I would make this a serious proposition. I�m sure I can find a whole slew of damaged darlings in my drawer. I was at the vanguard of this cold � North Carolina cold, or from the plane � there was a nice old man with his wife boarding and we were standing across from our seats as Rose installed the car seat and Ro was in the Baby Bjorn, but the man took Ronan�s hand and then the baby with the monkey-brain strongman grip would not let go, and the whole thing was germy as hell � and now that Pedro has just shaken it off (he got it last), it�s come back around. To me. Lovely. In other news, I pushed Baby Ro out of bed last night. He screamed for quite a while. But I checked his little body: no marks. Just a modicum of righteous indignation.
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