the rix mix

heard birds singing nesting songs at sunrise,
a few crow caws,
every morning this
now up at 6:45 am gulping coffee
waiting at window for ride to work
never enough sleep when I'm trying to synchronize
my overlapping worlds, two energies, both running
these are tough decisions, when to  wind it up,
***
Typewriter poems. The clacking & thunking carriage, keys that pushed back even on electric machines. Using tabs if you were neat & consistent about it. A physical thing. Made poets want to travel all over the paper, what Charles Olson called an "open field." Fun journal writing, a strong visual presence. This is one of my simpler examples. I phased the style out around this time. I'd write them, put them aside, return later & the forms made no sense, I'd forgotten how to read them. They were difficult to revise, a hassle when typing copies. They were a major annoyance for poetry magazine editors. especially friends who felt obliged to publish something I sent. & if the editor had to close up the spacings or do a reduction on the copy machine to make it fit inside margins on a 5 1/2" 'zine page, what I thought was a big beautiful word flower just wilted away.

Labels: about writing, poem