A Writer's Notebook, Day One-Thousand-Seven-Hundred-And-Forty-Two

Now that Melissa and I are back at home, I want to really begin working on a full length poetry manuscript.  The first thing that I am going to need to do is to just select work for it, and that is not going to be the easiest task.  I have a lot of poetry and I am not certain about just what I want to focus this book around.  It will be good to begin with some poems that I have had online, I think, in particular those that have received the best response from my audience.  That will provide a bit of a direction, perhaps.  It may be enough to have even just a few poems to start building around.  I have a process for this, I know, but it is very intuitive and not at all clear, but I know what has worked for me in compiling poems into a chapbook, and I feel that this is going to be a similar kind of process, just on a different scale.  The real key is to just get a sense of the work and then to examine how it all connects together, though I also know that I will need to keep myself from going so deep into this that I get overwhelmed.  It has to remain more of an intuitive process than an intellectual one.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Poem: Neighborhood Inhabitants

Neighborhood Inhabitants There was a fox once, and another time, otters, and now a peacock that we think got lost during one of the storms. She stays down on the other end of the street, though, does not visit us. We have a racoon family that stays in our tree some nights, and there is a baby lizard, a brown basilisk, who we have seen several times. It is not supposed to be here, is invasive and troublesome to the local ecosystem, as are the duck.  I hear there are giant snails now who eat stucco or concrete or something of that sort. I have not seen one, though, I just heard they are here and big as my fist.
Read more

A Writer's Notebook, One-Thousand-Eight-Hundred-And-Seventy-Three

I am still finding it difficult to get back to a more productive work schedule at the moment.  In part, I am sure it is that I gave myself permission to slack off a bit, and it is difficult to walk that back, especially because I am still writing and being productive, even if not to the same degree. I know it would be good to get back to doing more writing, but I also know that I am still meeting my core obligations, even if at a more minimal level.  Really, I just need to make the choice and force myself to stick to it.  To that end, I am planning to at least get back to work on my longer projects again tomorrow, even if I don't increase the poetry output right away.
Read more

A Writer's Notebook, Day One-Thousand-One-Hundred-And-Thirty-Three

I received my acceptance to attend workshop at the Palm Beach Poetry Festival next year and am very excited to be working with Matthew Olzmann, a poet whose work I have admired for some time.  He has a rare capacity for being simultaneously absurd and serious in ways that are hysterical, but with devastating insights underneath.  I feel quite fortunate to have the PBPF, and can say, honestly, that each workshop I have attended there has been incredible.  As a person who has taken many workshops in my life, and who often finds them wanting, I am always astounded at the caliber of the classes at the festival, both in the instruction and in the community of poets I have encountered.  I only wish it could be more than just one week out of the year.
Read more