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.

at the AWP in denver, colorado

some things i realized while i was there:

1. more is not always better when it comes to books.

2. more is often better when it comes to rainbows.

3. i have drinking limits

4. language is only and even a material

5. the letter "u" can be really dirty

6. i will probably always be a starbucks yuppy

7. alone-time is underrated

8. expensive hotels can be really nice

9. there are a lot of things i'm not sure about

10. there is something to be said about fake plastic dripping blood

11. books are much heavier than clothes

12. language is everywhere

13. language is everywhere

14. people are very similar in many ways

Poem as magnetic field

he hates the feel of work
her father
growing money in the garden
all wrapped up in paper and canary gold
foil and pretty looks in the pictures
she'd wake up on the driveway eating
radishes in red teeth
her mother drove
death like wind carrying pearls like
they do in high fashion
magazines
like girls wear pinecones
inside their hair and talk to each other
in opposites
she thanked death's
sway and taught people to feed camels
the sea foamed at night
when she traced water onto scratch-paper
absorbing expression and the
grass fleeing when it got too wet
now she freezes midway among
ornaments hanging in the attic
she waits for the sea
like her camels coming home.

Poem as Gentle Riot

1

Strictly speaking, there is a narrow definition: the fauna communicate in automatic modes of speech through an understanding that there are certain conversations to be avoided, not speaking of the ones they never had nor would they completely draw a person they’ve never met, but the practicality is heavy without taking its place; you, sitting across the street near a phone booth, regret not approaching such icicles of speech, but hey—throwing paper airplanes in a churchyard can be pleasing and a little wish.

2

Keep that hot head away from your daughters, because years later it will all feel the same, strictly speaking. The boring words slack on the page and the big houses live on water; the antelopes are glistening in their finely tuned hammocks. You’ve finally made it and you’re playing footsies with money to entertain your wanderlust. Question: how can you turn a squid into a mustache? Answer: design a new way to feed the rich.

3

It’s like those kids on a football field stealing the football, and then they cut it in half and flip it upside down, and they turn it into a boat and some of them are pouring out everyone's Gatorade and making a gigantic lake, and then they sail the football from one side of the lake to the other, and all the football players and coaches and cheerleaders are confused and freezing, and the football in two parts is now two sailboats and everyone is thirsty and extremely careful, you could call it a gentle riot.

like Silverstein, but different

I'm on an anagram binge as part of an exercise to get me thinking differently.

I Won't Hatch!

by Shel Silverstein

Oh I am a chickie who lives in an egg,
But I will not hatch, I will not hatch.
The hens they all cackle, the roosters all beg,
But I will not hatch, I will not hatch.
For I hear all the talk of pollution and war
As the people all shout and the airplanes roar,
So I'm staying in here where it's safe and it's warm,
And I Will Not Hatch!

****

Oh, a Twitch

(by me)

I tell her as I watch a streetcar go by,
I watch at smoke dripping by,
I tell a small troll holla
until the troll can't see the walk
or the phallic innuendo
or the hollowing out.
He clinches her shawl and pieces a
vanilla whatnot on the habitat;
wait for the ash thing which is normal,
of low finite kind: a nail, a hue, a hiss.

arrgh!

never a bad time for a good pirate reference.

question:

are new versions meant to replace the old ones, or is it possible for all varieties to exist peacefully together?  do "rough drafts" somehow weaken the point of the finished product?  or is it some sort of humble/helpful reminder for anyone to see where anyone else has come from?

when we replace things, is it ever possible for us to not be hiding something?

re~place \ri-'plas\ transitive verb substitute a person or thing for another that is broken, inefficient, lost, no longer working, or no longer yielding what is expected; switch seemingly equivalent items.

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i am learning to end things sooner, as in now.