I still think everything I have ever written is crap. But I have this confidence that sometime soon I'll write something that is not crap. This is a pretty good place to be, productivity-wise if not sanity-wise. And I'd rather write lots than be overly sane anyway.
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Which well-known poet once briefly worked for the company that made Richard Simmons' infomercials and used to answer the phone when it was Richard Simmons phoning pretending to be his assistant Marcia? No, it wasn't Olga Broumas nor was it Robin Becker.
(I was laughing almost to the point of tears hearing that story though I'm not quite sure why.)
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This business of taking some "ring of finality" last lines from a poem and starting off with them is incredibly productive for me. Like, holy cow productive. I also hit a point this morning where I was just writing and writing and not worrying about making "a poem" out of it which is just where I wanted to get this week. I have a bunch of pages and somewhere in there I think is at least a poem.
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The doorknob that may or may not turn
The door that may or may not stick
The head hairless and revealed
The chance of being caught
The dark, the light, the dark
The known, the strange, the stranger
The unendurable beginning, the unendurable end
What quickens us & brings us to surrender
The breath from which our bodies come
The eros of just being alive
The door we push at & finally fall through
(class notes: things that are erotic)
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"Poems are written by bodies : they're not written by minds."
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[draft deleted]
4 comments:
Oh, Anne, I like this--(I will say more later if you would like--email me). I think this poem starts with the second line. The transitions between stanzas are fabulous. Read it Thursday!
Thanks, Pamela! I can't read the whole thing Thursday because we are limited to one page at most (there are 4 poetry classes and 1 fiction class, most of which have 10 people in them -- so there will probably be at least 30 people reading, so they enforce the limit pretty strictly). But I am thinking of reading the last section and maybe one other. (There's actually more of it than I posted here! I've been a busy girl.)
Anne, check your email. I sent you some "drafty" type reframings of what I think are two good poems here. You can post or not post them or my brief comments, but here's the note I just sent you along with the drafty drafts.
hey, maybe somebody oughta close a window...
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send me the rest if you want. I'm crazy busy but your poems inspire me. I'd love to see what you did with the other one. Forgive the intrusion. It's like passing a favorite garden and not being able to resist snapping off a few dead branches or plucking at past blooms. Thanks so much for the opportunity. This is fun for me. Remember, you are the captain of this boat. (I love boat poetry, that is, reading the names of the boats into stanzas.)
All best muses,
Lorna Dee
(P-Town! Be still my beating heart! Alum with Cynthia Huntington, '79-80. Love the pics and play by play. Be well. Walk the dunes. "I've seen whales leaping..." ~LDC)
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good to see you at play & doing good work
you deserve it (breathe)
I really enjoyed this poem. I especially loved:
You pry an oyster open till it dies,
divulges, the pearly gray nacre
and the intimate meat.
and how the image comes back at the end, and picks up more flesh and weight.
I also think the poem could start with the second line.
Thank you!
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