living things

I was recently email-discussing the idea of poems being finished...the anxiety of the "THIS IS DONE" thing, I believe is how it went.  And I thought about a reading at this last AWP, where Sawako Nakayasu read--among other things--a couple of my favorite poems from her latest book, Texture Notes.  At one point, she spoke about how she believes poems are these constantly living, changing things, even after they've been published.  She then read a piece originally in English, except when she read it, there were lines of Japanese glittered throughout.  It was a beautiful meshing that was read so skillfully that even a trained ear surely struggled to draw lines between the two languages--let alone my own amateur self trying to recognize even a portion of her Japanese.  I knew enough to notice that opposites were at play between the two languages, but that's besides the point; the point is, I often feel like I'm off limits from messing with something once it's been printed, maybe even once it's been shared with a certain group of people.  And while I found Sawako's thoughts to be inspiring and assuring, I still struggle with an obsessive type of attachment to certain states of poems.

And then these last few days happened, and I started hearing about NaPoWriMo, a lot.  Everybody's plans, sites where poems will be shared.  And while I've lingered back and forth regarding what I'm gonna do with the poems I plan on writing everyday throughout April, I found myself coming back to this blog and wanting to revamp it and post them here.  But a lot of things have changed in my life since I was blogging here; I'm reminded of that by almost every entry.  So I started feeling the need to edit the old entries, reword things, and possibly delete a few posts altogether.  It's not at all a blocking out, or a sort of hiding.  I just think there's a need to feel like I'm in an appropriate space, to feel comfortable based on my life, right now, in this place where I'll be sharing things.  It'll probably seem a bit sad, even, taking certain stuff away, and remembering how I felt when I was first compiling these words and pictures.  And for that, I'm gonna leave a lot of old things up.  But as I found myself opening posts and changing a word here, a word there, I remembered my less digital, more physical instincts, and Sawako's words, and my struggle with where I stand regarding them.  And I thought about how funny it seems that I have no problem changing something on a blog, but would not be able to perform these same actions on these same exact sets of words and ideas and photos, were they physically resting in my hands.  And I mean that literally and emotionally.  I couldn't do it.




I recently got my first acceptance to have a poem published.  It's an online journal, and while the email thrilled me, I find myself wondering how different I would feel--how much more "legitimate" it may seem to tell people--were it a copy I could hand directly to someone.  (And how much of that really is based on the "people," on the others who I will share the news with, which branches off into this idea of "recognition" and another email talk I've been having recently which, I suppose, is a different post altogether).  Half the email responses I get these days have "sent from my iphone" at the end of them, some kind of miniature, contracted version of the already filtered online selves we present to people.  It's not unusual to feel like I find out more about my friends through Facebook than anywhere else.  And so often it's the really intricately personal details that come about online.  Or the random, meaningless statements that aren't trying to belong to a particular part of someone's heteroglossia, which can end up feeling very intimate and revealing.  Although "Facebook speech" could surely be argued as one portion of heteroglossia in itself.  I guess the safety in the distance created online is nothing new.  But I'm wondering when we will begin to question the things that do have physicality to them, things that have weight, that can be placed on shelves.  How far away is the time when I will tell someone I've got a new poem somewhere, and go to hand them a copy of its existence, only to find that I'm given a strange, suspicious look...




I am NOT going to delete anything that was a part of my original goal; this will be my constraint.  But I may edit.  I've got older poems up here that I read now and have no idea how to feel about.  I have a filter that automatically pops up, telling me that this is something I would not have written today.  I start wanting to translate myself into the 2011 version, although even within a year, where I'm at in this distinct world of poetry that I tend to grab onto varies so incredibly much.  And I'm still trying to figure out how to deal with that, what kind of sense to make of things outside this moment.  How can I write this poem, this essay, this exact post in a way that will still feel friendly and comfortable a year from today?  But even more than that, I would like to find the charm within that sort of self-uncomfortableness.