Would That I Might

Not tonight, it seems I had expected it, but it is nothing I am owed or that is due. It is just a pattern I have noticed and anticipated to continue, but such things mean nothing, are not obligations, anyhow. I will just wait, I suppose, tomorrow seems likely, but again, that is just me making another assumption.

I have been slowly building towards compiling a full length collection of poetry, and I am starting to have a good sense about what I really want to do with it, how I want to approach the process.  So much of it, for me, is about putting the work into conversation so that the collection becomes a book and not just a pile of poems, and for me, much of that is about finding ways to connect the work, to organize it in more than just the basic sense of placing the pieces in order, but providing elements that make it feel cohesive and in conversation with itself.  The thing is, that has to happen as the result of a process, as a part of selecting and revising the work, finding the places where different poems connect, and in developing the book into a setting for each individual piece.  That is not something that happens by contemplation alone.  It comes from digging into the process, and I think I need to start getting more serious about that.  Really, there is some...

You are finishing up I am not, but I hear your group call is ending. I have not been listening, but I can hear it from my office, and I heard the words "good-bye," and now it is silent again, you are quiet and the room is quiet. I, too, will be done soon enough, I expect, which will be nice. It will be good when both of us can be finished with everything else.

I am not certain what happened that I didn't post an entry to my blog last night.  I did write a poem on here, so I can confirm my memory of having done work on here, but I am not certain if I just got distracted after writing that poem and somehow flaked out, or if I did write something and it never posted for some reason.  I feel like I did write something, but is that me recalling writing last night, or is it from my previous efforts?  I cannot really be certain, and, in the end, even if I did write something, it is not here.  I just do not know if it is gone or if it never was.

I do not think you understand It is not anything I blame you for, not really. It is not easy to know those things, to know the experience or what it means, to be prepared with that, to be ready or to realize  what is happening in those moments. I am not excusing this. It is not anything I wanted.  It is a breakdown, is loss of control, is something that overwhelms, that I could not fight. I do not expect you to understand. It is not easy. You do not have these experiences, I know that, I know it is strange  and it was unpleasant. I am upset by it. I did not want to do that, to have that happen. I do not expect you will be able to understand, not really, not in the deep sense, but maybe you can accept that you not understanding is no reason for judgement or the withholding of sympathy.

My father warned me He was certain there were things to never do, ways of being that would  make it clear, would reveal me to be a Jew. I did not understand why it was, not then, not quite yet.

I've been thinking a lot about the exercises I want to present in my workshop and I have a pretty good idea for most of what I am planning to do, but I would like to add one more example to the syllabus.  The general concept is to share different approaches, with focus on different aspects of poetry, and in order to do a more complete job of that, I feel like it would be important to add something that is more about the musicality of poetry.  The issue is that I want it to be something that is approachable and not overly technical, but still more than just rhyming or consonance.  As well, I am aware that I want to make this reasonable as a group exercise.  I trust myself that I will come up with something, as I do often play in that space when I am writing, and I have some techniques and exercises in that direction, it is just figuring out the way to shape it into something with more concrete instructions.