A Writer's Notebook, Day Two-Hundred-And-Eighty-FIve

I have four or so new poems today, and am really quite pleased with them, generally.  There is one in particular that I am rather happy about having written, as the idea had been in my mind for some time, but I couldn't quite think how to make it work.  I really just pushed myself to do it today, and I am quite pleased with the results.  Granted, it is still a first draft, but I think I have the shape the tone, and many of the other larger details as well.  It feels complete, even if it is not yet polished.

I also am quite happy with the other pieces I wrote, it is just that this one stands out to me as something special, perhaps because the idea has been in my head for a bit and really it just sort of tickles me as a concept.  Sometimes that is enough, I suppose.  A lot of the poems I'm working on lately have been built from ideas that I find sort of absurd or silly in some way, but which I take seriously, and this poem certainly fits into that category.  One friend of mine who has been reading my work says that a signature move is to make "the strange seem normal and the normal seem strange," which I think is a fairly good description, really.  In general, I think that my interest is in creating work that disarms the reader with something absurd or surreal, but presented as mundane.  This is, of course, a fairly broad description, but I think it is somewhat apt for a lot of my best work.

The poem that I wrote today that fits that aspect of my work is one I titled "The Flower That Destroyed Cincinnati", and it describes a city being overrun by an incredibly fast growing strain of some plant which is so beautiful no one notices the degree of it's proliferation until it is everywhere.  It is a silly concept, and I know that, but that is part of the point.  The challenge in writing something of that sort is to control the mood and tone enough to get the reader to step into that idea in a different way.  I think that, by the end of the poem, that does happen.  Indeed, I feel that the ending was quite good.

I am also quite happy with other poems from today, if I think about it.  I wrote one that was about my Dad that I think is quite good, and another personal piece, as well, about my issues with coordination, which I think is rather effective.  As well, I wrote a sort of meditation on questions about consciousness, and a poem that was based on one of the exercises I handed out in class yesterday.  In all, I feel it was a very productive day, even if I spent it at home in my pajamas.  I suppose that is a perk of being a poet, and it's rather nice, especially considering the lack of economic incentives.

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