Would That I Might

It's been a bit of a slow day.  I did write another poem, though I am not sure about it, really.  That's okay, though, as all of this work will require revision, and I am getting to the point where I'll have to focus in on that soon enough.  I actually did have a bit of hesitancy getting to work on it today, but it was mainly a question of my being fairly tired, and once I got myself going, everything clicked the way it should. I need to get myself a bit more focused, but I am energized and doing the work in terms of writing, and I feel great about that.  In the past few months, I have really made a huge amount of progress, and getting myself back into writing poetry is a huge thing.  It has me in a creative state that I had missed for a long time, and I am very happy about that. I had intended to send out my second query today, but I didn't get it done, so I will need to focus on that tomorrow.  I did some of the research and started drafting the letter,...

Today was a rather exciting day, as I sent out my first real query.  While I have shown work to a couple of agents already, in both of those cases I had met the agent and spoken to them directly first, and they were making the request based on that interaction.  In some ways, I am really not all that scared that I will find an agent.  I've had two that I've spoken with and they both were very positive about the quality of the work, and seemed certain that I would find an agent who was interested.  It really was more a matter of their own ability to place this book, and not the quality of the work itself, so I feel positive about things. Now, of course, that is not to say that I am just going to send out a query and be done.  I am in the process of personalizing a second letter to send tomorrow, and I plan to keep going after that, getting them out in the next few days or so.  After that, it is just a matter of waiting and seeing who comes back with what r...

I seem to be continuing my work, and feel rather excited.  I've begun some of the inquiries to query, and the start of that process is a bit nerve-racking.  I have had a question already and am attempting to get some information about one agents requirements, and am waiting on that at the moment.  It is a process, and I am at the very start of it, but I have a very good feeling, and I trust that things will go well. I think that I may well attempt to put the synopsis together in the morning.  It will take a bit of time, but it may be necessary and gives me a chance to take a quick look back through things, one last time before I start this whole process.  In addition, there is an event next week at FAU with an agent who is visiting the MFA students, and I am considering sending a query letter to her in advance of that, and she does request a synopsis.  It is not something I am really excited to do, honestly, but I am going to try and approach it with a go...

It is often the questions which seem the most inane and perhaps stupid that are actually those requiring the deepest consideration.  While I have considered myself a poet since a very young age, and have read and thought about poetry for most of my life, even when I might not have been writing it as much, only recently I have begun to reconsider many of my previous assumptions about this craft.  I owe much of this rethinking, of course, to Gregory Pardlo, whose class last week has reshaped a great deal of my thinking on these issues.  One element of that I am reconsidering, perhaps the most essential question of all, is that of the nature of poetry itself.  By that, I mean: what separates poetry from prose? As a poet who also works in prose forms, it is a question that is strangely hard to pin down.  For most of my youth I had not been exposed to prose poetry, so I assumed the essential element was the line-break as a device.  Thomas Lux, my mentor as an...

Today has been another rather busy day, and quite a positive one for the most part.  I had a very positive and productive meeting with Andrea Somberg, the agent that I've been speaking with, and she was very positive about the query letter, and even granted me permission to mention her suggestion to those she named.  I think I am well on my way in that capacity, and I feel very fortunate for all the help I have received in that regard.  Being a writer can, at times, be a very isolated existence, artistically, and it is very uplifting to find warmth and encouragement from others within the professional world of literature.  I also have continued my work on poetry, writing on a few pieces.  One is new entirely, and I think is going to be quite good, though I need to work on it.  I have other pieces that I wrote this week which I need to get to revising, as well.  I really need to find someone to trade poems with or something.  I've been on the hun...

I've had an incredibly productive day, writing on a number of different poems, while also working on the craft essay.  In addition to that, I did some other work that I needed to get into.  Tomorrow is also my meeting with the agent, in order to discuss my most recent draft of the query letter.  If I get a positive response, I'll be close to sending out.  I may need to do a bit more work in order to prepare some additional support materials, and a bit more to personalize the letters. I do want to talk a moment about the fact that this week was an incredibly energizing experience.  It is not only the workshop, though that was truly incredible, but the entirety of the experience.  I found many of the readings and talks to be inspiring, and the other poets that I interacted with were very generous.  This includes both faculty and participants.  It truly turned the switch back on, and I am trying to keep up at this point. I'm sure that this is goi...

Today was the final day of the festival, and while I am saddened at it ending, I am quite energized, and really excited.  I think that I have a great deal of thinking to do, and I am also very happy with the work that I am producing.  I just wrote a poem moments before starting this blog, and I am very happy with the first draft. What I really want to think about today, for a moment, though, is the way that the class was conducted and what I believe that I learnt from this experience.  In many ways, I want to find aspects of this that I can adapt into my own teaching, as it is an exceptional way to run a class, and I feel that I learned a huge amount.  Specifically, what I really appreciated most was that the focus of the class wasn't on improving the poems, but on seeing them as examples of the poet's work.  Our opinions about the work was not relevant at all, in terms of assessing it, as that is only an exercise in personal aesthetic.  In order to al...

Today my poems were discussed in class, and I am very grateful to both Gregory Pardlo and to the other participants for their feedback.  I felt fairly vulnerable, as I did share work that is extremely personal.  It is a poem I've discussed here before, and I don't want to get into it again right now, but it is centered around a personal trauma, and I am glad to have classmates that treated the work with respect and seriousness. I also, of course, got my assignment, which I just finished, and am now going to get to bed.  It is almost three, and tomorrow is the last day of the festival, so I really need some sleep.

I am still on the sleepless side of things, and it is going to be another long day tomorrow.  While I did not write a poem today, I did begin a craft essay exploring how time can be rendered in poetry, and certain possibilities for building tension in the work through the juxtaposition of different temporal representations.  The basic concept is to do with the difference between the way that time can be presented in the content versus the use of poetic devices to create a tempo in the language and the way that this may be utilized to build tension in a poem.  I need to do a bit more research and find some examples, but I think I've already got a good start.  I am hoping to show the bit that I have already to one of the poets who is at the conference tomorrow. Again, I feel incredibly fortunate to be at the festival and attending the class I am in.  I think that I am really learning two essential things, one is a way of pushing towards new and exciting work, a...

It's another late night following another exciting day filled with many new ideas about poetry.  I have much to share, but it is so late, and I am exhausted already.  I need to be up before 7 to get myself ready so I can go, so I am going to keep this quite short. Class today was again a really amazing experience, and I am really finding myself challenged and excited not only by these concepts, but also by the way that they are enacted into our work.  It is changing how I think about poetry on a deep level, and I am rethinking even the new ideas I was thinking yesterday.  Indeed, I feel that much of what I attempted to present before is probably not how I am thinking about it now.  I have so much to think about, and I am also inspired.  I wrote two new poems tonight, and might try another in the morning, if I have time.  I am going to bed, though, as it is far too late and I am only going to get a bit of sleep as it is.

I have so much that is in my mind that I would like to share right now, but it is also near 2 in the morning and I have to be in class early, so I am going to make this short and hopefully catch up soon.  The class is not a workshop, it is something far more than that, and I am incredibly fortunate to have this opportunity.  It really is mind expanding in ways that I would not have believed possible previously. Gregory Pardlo's approach is completely altering how I think, and making me reconsider so many ideas I had.  In some ways, his conception of voice is almost to view the goal as expanding it through an almost antagonistic view.  That is a gross simplification, really.  Consider the notion that language is a necessary component in order for a mind to function self-reflectively.  This idea is not particularly extreme, but comes from studies of the deaf, particularly those that never learned sign language.  The lack of a firm linguistic understand...

Today was a really exciting day, and I feel incredibly enthused.  First, I had my workshop with Nickole Brown, who is incredible in general and who is now getting to know me well enough to really not pull her punches, which I appreciate genuinely.  She essentially said that she recognizes I have the knowledge and talent but that I am not doing the work I need to be and challenged me to get my act together and do the work.  That's not to say that she didn't appreciate the work itself, but she pointed out many of the flaws in it that I need to address  to make it more accessible.  That these are ideas I understand and have heard before, as she pointed out, does not make her comments any more valuable for me.  I really feel quite lucky to have someone essentially put the challenge that I have been facing internally into a format that is so much simpler and more externalized, and I find it really meaningful to me that someone would care enough to make these com...

Well, it was bound to happen, and it did, and I am sorry to have missed posting yesterday.  In truth, I was at a fundraising event last night that had very little food but quite a bit of alcohol.  I try not to drink so much these days, but I must admit that, by the time the party ended, I was past the point I should have been.  I should have found time to work earlier in the day, and I did do some other work, but the event was actually out of town, so most of the day was spent packing up and driving for an overnight trip. Honestly, I have stated before that I expected this might occur, and I am not going to beat myself up about it.  At the same time, I am certainly not going to make a habit of it.  Falling short is not a reason to quit, or even a reason, at the moment, to alter my intentions.  I find writing this blog is useful for me, even if no one else was reading it or found it of value, though, of course, I hope it does offer something of interest, a...

I am still struggling to regain something that I have lost touch with in terms of writing poetry.  That is not something in the poems themselves, I don't think.  Rather, I mean to say that the writing of a poem is not the issue, in and of itself.  I can still think in terms of the poetic craft just as sharply  as I ever had, and my ear is still very good. I am probably being repetitive in discussing this once more, but I really do have the sense of something that once motivated me and brought me a great deal more enthusiasm and even joy in writing poetry.  I do not know what it was I had that I am missing not, though I know that the sense of it is much keener, and that I take as a positive sing.  If I can understand what I feel I am missing more clearly, that certainly suggests that I am getting closer to reconnecting with it, especially as I am not even certain I ever before had an understanding of what it was that was holding back my writing, or at leas...

I went back to writing the list poems today, though I felt that the one which I wrote had more to it, and it doesn't feel like any sort of loss to do that work.  Indeed, it is more important to be able to take something so simple and view it through the right lens, taking it on as a serious effort in the direction of creating something powerful and interesting.  In this case, it became rather odd, and somewhat textural in the qualities of the elements included.  I somehow came up with the idea of listing cliches, and used not only specific language, idiomatic cliches or phrases that are just used all the time, but also described a number of different examples of situations or details that are cliche in some sense. In many ways, I think that some of the ideas that are in the list are really interesting.  In some ways, the forms real beauty is in putting things into that category so as to show that particular perspective, while another is about the juxtapositions tha...

I tackled another poem that was a bit hard, and which I have had in my head for some time.  It is about the poet Thomas Lux, who passed away in 2017, and who was my adviser as an undergraduate in college.  He had a very important role in my life, though I didn't have a strong relationship with him after I graduated.  Honestly, I had always expected that I would reconnect with him at some point, but the opportunity for that to happen is passed. The truth is that I have a lot of things I could speak about in terms of my feelings about him and his passing, and this poem is really fairly limited in scope, but it was a beginning and an attempt to put some of the thoughts and feelings I have into a shape. The poem doesn't really go all that deep in terms of the things that I could explore in terms of that relationship, but it is something that I had in mind for a long time.  It takes as it's subject the game of softball, which I used to play as an undergraduate with Thom...

Today has been a rather productive one, and I feel very much enthused at the moment.  First, I wrote a flash fiction piece that I am thinking might be valid, if I do a bit more work on it.  It is something that grew from a silly and surreal conversation that I had with an acquaintance about computers.  She mentioned some technical problems in a way that personified the machine a bit, and I took that to suggest that she shouldn't be complaining or they might take umbrage.  That was the gist of the exchange, though it went on somewhat more between us.  This led me to think of a small idea for a piece about something in that vein, and it came out as a tiny little pearl of fiction that I think might have be doing something interesting. More significantly, I also wrote a rather difficult poem about a personal experience that I don't really speak about, and which is really complicated to discuss, generally.  In high school, another boy took a bit of bullying to...

I did write another list poem this evening, though it was not how I started out.  It is a bit different, still, than others, and I am not sure if I really like it at in the present form.  I think it is actually a matter of the order in the list, really, and that is a matter for revision.  At present, it feels a bit top heavy, and I think that the first item, which started as a bit of a free-write, is actually better off being further down, so it feels like the hot spot late in the poem, and allows other items to serve in the whole of the piece.  If it is most of the way down, it has a different relationship to the other items on the list. I'm still needing to find something.  I can sit and write, and I can put together language in ways that I find meaningful in terms of their beauty, and which reflect a sensibility I honed as a student of poetry, but I am still feeling the disconnection that I mentioned yesterday.  I tend to think it is likely an illusion...

Today's poem was not a list.  I'm not sure it is particularly great, but it is something, and I am glad to have done it.  I am, once more, extremely tired, as I didn't get a great deal of sleep last night.  Ulysses was having seizures, so I was attempting to keep him calm and hold him between episodes, but he wanted to get up and have a snack.  Unfortunately, he was still having activity, and he would lose all control of his front paws and fall, which is why I wanted to keep him on the bed. Melissa and I were able to keep him safe until the episode passed, but it took a while, and after, I was not able to go straight back to sleep.  Really, it was a minor episode with him, it just messed with my sleep last night, and so I am a bit over-tired at present.  It was that feeling, and the conflict between my desire to do this work and my desire to get to bed early that was the subject of the poem I wrote, actually. While I am not particularly proud of the poe...

I did write another list poem.  It is hard to do them repeatedly and feel that they are moving forwards, but that is part of the challenge, I think.  In some ways, it feels like something becomes more meaningful as it continues.  Each one I have written is somewhat the same, and yet they are all quite unique, I think, though they do gain resonance when I look at them together. I am not really sure where that is going.  I'm certain that some of them will be good, but I do want to write more than this.  It feels that the desire to write more varied kinds of poetry will pick up and kick me into action, so I am not worrying about it, as long as I keep working.  Indeed, it feels that the best thing to do is to allow myself to indulge in this one form, and see how far I can take that. In doing so, ironically, I am stirring up ideas for other poems, though none are fully in focus as of yet. It is, at least for me, much harder to investigate and analyze the pro...

I wrote another list poem, and found it to be rather interesting.  It does take a certain kind of discipline, and I feel very much that I am encountering a very interesting and challenging form.  It is not that I've never encountered or written list poems in the past, but that this kind feels a bit different and has certain features to it that I think are taking my imagination in interesting directions. These are largely things that I am doing in my own mind, I think, not any specific criteria, but they seem to reflect something, I think, or at least are inspired by what I encountered yesterday.   In general, I attempt to keep them in the third person, and to make the lists about broad topics.  As well, the entries attempt to range in a variety of ways, and there are repetitions and variations intended to draw parallels that help to create new connections.  In writing these pieces, I am discovering my own thoughts, much of the time.  It is not an ine...

I had a rather productive day, not only in that I did write a poem, but also in that I worked on my query letter and did some work towards that goal.  The event I attended today was rather interesting, focusing in part on haiku and in part on another Japanese form, zuihitsu.  This latter is a hybrid form, but involves list making as a central element, and it was that aspect which we were encouraged to explore.  Indeed, the piece that I worked on today is in that format, and I am rather pleased with it.  I could have continued it and actually have ideas that I think would have been quite good for it, but was happy with what emerged.  In revision, of course, it might shift. The list form seems quite interesting to me, and worth continuing to explore.  I think I may try it again tomorrow and see how it develops.  I have ideas for lists, and it is a form that I feel capable of throwing myself into right at this moment.  In some ways it feels as thou...

Several things have struck me today, ideas that seem worth pursuing.  One is the start of a drama, though I've little sense of it beyond a small scene, and am still learning what it is actually dealing with.  I'm going to allow it to come out as it develops, I think, and see.  It may be the way to do it for this, and it takes certain pressure off.  Once I have a basic idea, I can go in again and take it in a direction, but I want to just see what happens. The scene in question is simple enough, but I have a good bit of the dialogue, and a fairly clear concept of where I want to take the scene, in a general sense.  I am not farther than a few minutes in, at least in my head, but it is clear to me that their is a lot more potential, and the other characters in the scene will also have things to do and say.  I've a pretty clear sense, at least, even if not many details. In other areas, I began working on some poetry, and wound up looking through files to f...

I am not certain why it is, but I am having difficulty getting myself into the right mental space to write poetry.  Honestly, I write poetry a lot less often these days, and am out of practice, but it still seems rather strange.  I think it is mostly an issue of just going for it, but I'm not really certain what to write about.  It used to be that I could just sit down and bang out a poem, but I didn't maintain that ability, and now I need to get myself going. Their is a part of me that is clearly blocked on the issue, though I don't know exactly why right now.  I should just force myself to write, and tomorrow that is my intent.  I am planning to spend a bunch of time tomorrow morning forcing myself to do the work.  It is strange, as I know I can do it.  Even now, some part of my mind is saying that all it would take is thinking in terms of line breaks, and I would shift into that mode.  It may be that simple, really, and it is just a matter of ...

I finished the most recent edit on the script for my short play.  It was not as severe a cut as the last few rounds, but I will need to do more, I think.  At present, it is a little under 2500 words, and that seems potentially like it is going to still be long for the desired length of the piece.  It is honestly rather difficult to assess, as the length is in time and not in terms of words or pages.  I think it is still a very wordy piece for that length, but it may well still work.  Matt suggested that might be the case, to an extent, in discussing it with me, in relationship to some of the choices made in performance. In general, I feel quite good about it as a piece, but I know that it won't be eligible for submission to many places if it doesn't get down to a ten minute length, which it may still be over.  I am going to read it again into the camera at some point, both so I can hear how it plays and so I can check the timing.  Of course, my perfo...

So, the New Play Festival at Theatre Lab is now over.  Technically, they have another event tomorrow, but it is in a different location, for a different audience, and is a repeat of plays already presented this weekend.  In all, I saw readings of five long plays, I believe, as well as the six short pieces in the showcase that I participated in.  The experience as a whole was really incredible, and the plays that I saw in the past few days were all really interesting and special. In terms of my own work, I feel that my play was successful, but I know it still needs a bunch of work.  First, it needs to be a bit shorter, in order to make it eligible for submission to ten-minute play events.  As well, I think there are some ideas that I might be able to sharpen a bit.  I think it first needs to be cut down, but I had a brief discussion about it with the founder of Theatre Lab, Lou Tyrell, and he suggested the possibility that I might want to push certain th...

Today was the reading which I have been preparing for and I am very glad to say that it went exceptionally well.  I think that there was a lot that I feel was working, and I found that a number of things played quite well.  That is to say that certain lines seemed to get a very positive response from the audience.  I also recognized a few small places where I can add back certain things.  I may need to do a little more trimming, as well, I think.  In all, it ran to about fifteen minutes, which is still long for a short monologue, though not beyond the limit.  I think it can be trimmed a bit more and made stronger, but I recognized that certain lines need to be restored.  As well, I recognized that some things can be shifted a bit in the play without losing the voice, and these may allow more changes in the pursuit of trimming and streamlining the play.  It went quite well, though, and I am very glad.  Friends and family who attended were v...

It has been a long week, and an even longer process in total, but tomorrow is the day, and I am, honestly, nervous, and excited.  I trust in the work, generally, but I have been up until all hours doing edits the last few nights, and I have to wonder a bit at my proficiency at a certain point.  It is, though, just a reading, not a full performance, and I am going to keep working on the piece to refine it further after the reading tomorrow.  This is a beginning step, and it will take more work to give this play a life of its own. However, tomorrow will be a triumph, I am sure.  I have absolute faith in the actor and his connection to the work.  It is clear that he found it, from the start, to be worthwhile, and I am glad that I am giving him a script that is a bit more manageable.  I hope that the newest draft will provide him opportunity to perform it at a reasonable speed, without the need to limit his performance for pace.  My goal has been to ge...

Well, it is another night of editing.  I reduced the play's length by another six hundred words, and I hope it is still the same, basically.  Honestly, I am rather frazzled at this point, having been up so much the past several nights.  I did sleep part of the day, but not nearly enough, so I am going to call it for now and get myself to bed.  Hopefully I will have more time tomorrow, as I do think this is the last rewrite, since the show is Saturday.

It is going to be another short entry tonight, as it is already well after four in the morning and I only got about three or four hours of sleep last night to begin with.  The new draft of the script was still running extremely long, requiring far more extensive cuts than previously.  I wound up reducing the play by a little more than 23 percent.  Doing this without ruining the voice or disrupting the narrative is not an easy thing, but I think I managed it somehow.  Honestly, it is a little frustrating that we won't have another rehearsal or anything before the performance, but that's how it is... I am going to check through the script once more, but mainly just for clarity.  It is supposed to be locked in by noon tomorrow but I am not sure if I will be able to get that last read done tonight, and I don't think I'll be awake all that early, at least not if I can help it.  I should have more time tomorrow, with the rehearsals over, so I am hoping to get s...

So, my play ran long today, as I expected, and the main takeaway from the rehearsal was for me to cut a bunch more.  In all truth, we really did not get very far with my piece, as other plays for the event went long in rehearsal.  We did a read through early on, but otherwise we did not get any real work done. I found it a little frustrating, really, that I had handed in my last draft asking about the need for more cuts and was told to wait until after the first rehearsal, when I would be able to get a bit more guidance.  The way things worked out, I was in basically the same position of knowing it needed some cuts, but not having any real guidance on what to do.  Still, I had been charged with making the edits tonight so that the actor can have a chance to look at the new draft before we get back to work tomorrow. In the discussion, the one thing that I really could have used was a bit of advice on how much needed to be cut, but that was not forthcoming.  A...