I am feeling a bit uninspired. When I was working on Poem-A-Day I frequently bumped against this problem. Then I would just write something flippant and move on.
That is my reaction to feeling a 'have' to write. Not that this blog is a 'have to'. It is and will hopefully always remain a 'want to'. But sometimes you feel like you have to do something. Even if you set up the situation and control it 100%. Even then, sometimes, you feel it. That pressure. The school work pressure. The deadline pressure.
When I first graduated from college I didn't write for 6 months. 6 very long months where I worried that I would never write again, where I stared at blank pages and dreamed of them drowning me.
I broke out of that period of not writing by forcing myself to write long studies of individual objects. I would stare at something and force the words out. I modeled myself on Gertrude Stein's Tender Buttons or Wallace Stevens' Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird.
In both of those instances the poets took everyday objects and tilted them slightly. They looked until they no longer seemed every day. My poems looked more like Stevens. They sprawled on the page and meandered from their original intents.
But I was writing again.
Right now I am at a point where I am writing a decent amount. I am sending to journals. But I have started a new job and live in a new house in a new state. I am still working out what that means. I am inspired to think about being inspired.
A scene from Midsomer Murders in 2012.
I am thinking about thinking about.
Eventually I will have to look at things again. Begin to dissect again. And I look forward to that. I may wake up tomorrow and be inspired to write 100 pages. I may wake tomorrow and want to watch Midsomer Murders and knit.
And that would be ok too. Unlike me from when I stopped writing after college. Me now is ok with taking breaks. I know it will come back. It always comes back.
I would like to talk about my writing in terms that make sense to non-writers. I'd settle for terms that make sense.
The first thing my mother always asks me when she reads a poem of mine is 'What does it mean?' or she will single out an element and ask what it means. What so-and-so stands for.
I never know how to answer her. She's asking a basic question. She wants to see into the metaphor and imagery that I'm using. To see with the same eyes. But most of the time a cigar is a cigar and there isn't much to add. In fact, I would argue that while we can discuss 'deeper' meanings all we want, at the end of the day most things mean exactly what they appear to.
Rose is a rose is a rose is a rose.
I come into this problem head long when I attempt to pull together a manuscript for competitions. Here my problem is one of overview. The long count. The career statement.
And I get hung up on it a bit. The what thing follows what question.
My current manuscript is a conglomerate of three. Which were themselves successors to other, older attempts. The first was called A Map of Longing. It was an examination of childhood told through poems about loss and death of elder family members. It was sad.
The second was an abandoned project on the life of Nikola Tesla that was called He'll Be A Child Of The Storm, No Of Light. It is something I am still interested in and will someday go back to, but it will be much longer. More involved, and probably use some prose.
The final manuscript was my 'hits' package. It was called Museum of Natural History and combined my word-a-day poems with poems about trees, science, and some of the death stuff from Longing. There were also poems about a fictional break-up that were told through the history of locations they go to. This manuscript also featured all of my poems that have been published.
None of them felt whole. So I've smooshed them together. Cutting some poems, adding others. I've left in the published work, but one of them may go.
But that's a perfect example of my problem. I don't know if it should. I have stared at this thing for days. Thought about it. I don't know if the poems should alternate in trios or if I should section the whole thing off.
Part 1: Childhood/End of innocence
Part 2: SCIENCE!
Part 3: Break-up/History/Tesla
Or not.
I have gone back to my college method of dealing with it. I printed the whole thing out and have it spread on my floor. The pages facing the light of day. Hanging out together. It's a hot mess since I'm also packing to move 2,000 miles THIS WEEK!
All of this is to say that A) I am working on my poetry; and B) I have no fucking clue what I'm doing.
