Hurtling

In the past, I conceived of a concept and the poems I wrote continued the exploration of that concept. Such an endeavor guided the trajectory of the writing. In other words, I wrote towards an idea or a concept that was already in place. The architecture of the manuscript that would soon house the poems was already in place.

Lately, what's been happening is I've been accruing work, but I don't have any concept of how to house them. So I'm a bit lost with my composition these days. I'm just writing, but I feel like I'm writing aimlessly. I feel like I'm looking at someone in profile as they slowly turn away from me.

It's not to say that I haven't had marginal successes with this recent cohort of poems. Many of them are finding homes. Just found out that a few of them will be taken by The Journal, which is cool. Like the "Dear Empire" poems, I just can't see the end yet. And I figure it might be because I just started this project in April.

But I'm the kind of guy who likes to know where I'm going ahead of time. I can't blindly follow the GPS in the car, I have to figure out ahead of time what the map looks like.

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My kid is into Legos these days. Legos and Goldfish. Why not combine the two?

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The wonderful Melissa Stein was visiting the Pacific Northwest by way of San Francisco. Here she is reading for Poetrynight. If you haven't already, grab a copy of Rough Honey!!

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