Thursday, April 30, 2009
Happens every spring. I receive two requests for new poems. One from editor of long-running local print 'zine, other from long-running webzine. This year, when the requests came, I was polishing a short anecdote for a memorial page, it was important to do it well. I'd get to the poems afterward, in a few days. That was weeks ago.
When I'd finished & sent the anecdote, I procrastinated with the poems. I knew why. I opened the file on the desktop titled "poems" & looked inside. I throw unfinished stuff in there along with revised older poems. There was nuttin' I wanted to finish or send. I checked blog entries tagged as "poems." A couple of old ones posted since last spring. A few oddball pieces that didn't qualify as poetry. I won't submit less than five poems, editors deserve choices. Both of them are broad-minded. They don't require writing visually identifiable as "poetry." A few times in the past, I've rush published work these guys liked but I later regretted sending into the world.
I've got the structure of a new web book set up, haven't touched it in a months, but it's a matter of moving poems that fit the concept in there from other places. A photographer friend is planning a coffee table book of Jersey shore photos, mostly Asbury Park, & has been poking at me for appropriate short commentaries; she hasn't collected the pictures together yet & I'm hoping they suggest excerpts from my many pages of shore prose & poems. The photos I've seen are lovely, moody, visually self-sufficient, I don't know what words could add to them. I write lots of prose. Making poems has usually requires that I deliberately try to make poems, writing my way into the creative mindset. Otherwise, one pops out only occasionally. Hand me that parchment, quill pen, & lamp burning midnight oil.
"If a nation expects to be ignorant and free, in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and never will be." Thomas Jefferson
When I'd finished & sent the anecdote, I procrastinated with the poems. I knew why. I opened the file on the desktop titled "poems" & looked inside. I throw unfinished stuff in there along with revised older poems. There was nuttin' I wanted to finish or send. I checked blog entries tagged as "poems." A couple of old ones posted since last spring. A few oddball pieces that didn't qualify as poetry. I won't submit less than five poems, editors deserve choices. Both of them are broad-minded. They don't require writing visually identifiable as "poetry." A few times in the past, I've rush published work these guys liked but I later regretted sending into the world.
I've got the structure of a new web book set up, haven't touched it in a months, but it's a matter of moving poems that fit the concept in there from other places. A photographer friend is planning a coffee table book of Jersey shore photos, mostly Asbury Park, & has been poking at me for appropriate short commentaries; she hasn't collected the pictures together yet & I'm hoping they suggest excerpts from my many pages of shore prose & poems. The photos I've seen are lovely, moody, visually self-sufficient, I don't know what words could add to them. I write lots of prose. Making poems has usually requires that I deliberately try to make poems, writing my way into the creative mindset. Otherwise, one pops out only occasionally. Hand me that parchment, quill pen, & lamp burning midnight oil.
Labels: about writing
