Oddities, Organizing, Obsessions

Here's an oddity:

This very odd horsehead carving frames the entry to my neighbor's house. I love it, but it's a strange thing to happen upon if you're wandering through the woods.

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I'm in the process of organizing two manuscripts. If you've been keeping up with my poem-a-day exercises, you'll know I've got several poems in a few different series. The "Dear Empire" series is something I'm trying to tackle as far as organization is concerned. I've identified a few titles for section breaks that are compelling to me. Among the potential section break titles are the following: ledger, museum, atlas, taxonomy. I'm looking at the idea of hierarchical structures as a way to organize these quirky poems about a fictional empire. I still haven't gotten past the idea that it quite possibly could be a very long manuscript. At the moment, I'm looking at Ben Lerner's Angle of Yaw to figure out how the hell he put his manuscript together. Seems like his prose poem sequence is at the center of the book and then sandwiched by verse sections. I don't think my manuscript will do that. And I'm pretty convinced that these "Camera" poems I've been writing have an indirect relationship with the "Dear Empire" poems. My hunch--I need another thematic sequence to create the transition between the two and to generate momentum through the manuscript. As is, the manuscript isn't moving forward. It's acting just like a dictionary would . . . you don't read a dictionary from cover to cover. You read a dictionary to locate a specific word.

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Obsessions . . . (excluding my undying love for my family), my latest--reading short stories, indie rock, finding time to write poems, lifting weights, thinking up projects for the house. Oh yeah, and I want an iPad.

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Current Spin:

I love this group.