A Writer's Notebook, Day Two-Hundred-And-Ninety-Nine
In some ways, I took it a bit easy today. I didn't work on my chapbook manuscript, though I am in the middle of getting it ready. Though there is a deadline, I feel that I have enough time to spend a day focused on other things. I attended a very nice reading this afternoon at The Book Cellar in Lake Worth. The reading was organized by Performance Poets of the Palm Beaches as part of a regular series that they do, with one event a month. I actually will be a featured reader at one event in a few months, and wanted to check it out for that reason. On top of hearing some very interesting poetry, especially the work of Flose Bourisiquot, who was the first of the featured readers.
As well, I came into contact with one of the editors for a local journal, the South Florida Poetry Journal (SoFloPoJo), that I have been meaning to send some work, which sparked me into action. I had already selected the poems, but I hadn't yet sent them in, and this provided me with a good opportunity to get on that. I was ready to do it, but sometimes I need a bit of a kick in the duff to take the next step.
On top of that, I actually wrote five poems today, and I feel quite good about most of them. One is a version of something I've been considering since I was in college, in response to an assignment by poet Thomas Lux. In the assignment, the idea is to start with the comment that you can't or won't say something. Of course, the hitch is needing to say the thing in the poem, if it is to be satisfying. I recall Tom saying that he wanted to do a poem that would be satisfying without yielding to that temptation, and he did a version by writing a piece where the speaker tells so many things, that it all seems to be absurd and unlikely, making the telling of those things as much of a lie as anything, but I think I might have found a different way to do it, and it seems to me that the result is actually a fairly relevant poem, though it probably still needs to be worked on.
A number of the pieces that I wrote today feel of that same sort, in a way, where they are fairly indirect, but clearly about things that are going on right now. I have a certain way of approaching large topics that is sort of sideways, and often it is done in a way that is achieved by using a fairly innocuous and broad concept, but imbuing it with a metaphorical specificity. For example, one piece uses the phrase "it happens", never explaining specifically what that refers to, but making it clear it is something very specific and very bad, but without providing the specifics or details. That sounds, I am sure, abstract, and I need to think up a better way of describing these kinds of pieces, but I feel that at least two poems I wrote today have that quality.
Anyhow, I feel that, though I did take a break from the manuscript, today was a very productive day, and I am hopeful about those poems at SoFloPoJo, though I have to see what happens. It is always a shot in the dark to some degree, but I know a number of people that work there and have been asked to submit before (though always with the caveat that the request meant nothing). Anyhow, I am quite happy with the work I accomplished today, and I am hoping I will be a bit reinvigorated for working on the chapbook tomorrow.
As well, I came into contact with one of the editors for a local journal, the South Florida Poetry Journal (SoFloPoJo), that I have been meaning to send some work, which sparked me into action. I had already selected the poems, but I hadn't yet sent them in, and this provided me with a good opportunity to get on that. I was ready to do it, but sometimes I need a bit of a kick in the duff to take the next step.
On top of that, I actually wrote five poems today, and I feel quite good about most of them. One is a version of something I've been considering since I was in college, in response to an assignment by poet Thomas Lux. In the assignment, the idea is to start with the comment that you can't or won't say something. Of course, the hitch is needing to say the thing in the poem, if it is to be satisfying. I recall Tom saying that he wanted to do a poem that would be satisfying without yielding to that temptation, and he did a version by writing a piece where the speaker tells so many things, that it all seems to be absurd and unlikely, making the telling of those things as much of a lie as anything, but I think I might have found a different way to do it, and it seems to me that the result is actually a fairly relevant poem, though it probably still needs to be worked on.
A number of the pieces that I wrote today feel of that same sort, in a way, where they are fairly indirect, but clearly about things that are going on right now. I have a certain way of approaching large topics that is sort of sideways, and often it is done in a way that is achieved by using a fairly innocuous and broad concept, but imbuing it with a metaphorical specificity. For example, one piece uses the phrase "it happens", never explaining specifically what that refers to, but making it clear it is something very specific and very bad, but without providing the specifics or details. That sounds, I am sure, abstract, and I need to think up a better way of describing these kinds of pieces, but I feel that at least two poems I wrote today have that quality.
Anyhow, I feel that, though I did take a break from the manuscript, today was a very productive day, and I am hopeful about those poems at SoFloPoJo, though I have to see what happens. It is always a shot in the dark to some degree, but I know a number of people that work there and have been asked to submit before (though always with the caveat that the request meant nothing). Anyhow, I am quite happy with the work I accomplished today, and I am hoping I will be a bit reinvigorated for working on the chapbook tomorrow.
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