Sunday, September 18, 2005

So I don’t know if this experiment of posting my morning notes is a good or not. It may show how totally incoherent I am without coffee. I’m reading Carole Maso’s “Breaking Every Rule” and I’m enjoying it very much.

Desire has made it possible for me to write into my greatest vulnerabilities, uncertainties. It has made it possible to not worry so much about the consequences, to let go a little. Desire has allowed me to write into its danger, its bliss, its silence, its abyss. To not care about failing. Whether these pieces were any “good” seemed hardly to enter into it. If I felt I was doing something I already knew how to do well, the rule was to start again in an attempt to break habitual patterns of mind and expression.

Note to self: it’s not always the most talented who produce the greatest work but those who are willing to take risks, even if it may, for a moment make them appear less talented.

Yesterday the proofs came from Massachusetts Review and Mid- American. Why do all my poems appear on odd number pages? I think it’s a good sign. I have finished the proofs today and typed up two more submissions. I am trying again for the journal I really want, the one which wrote me three letters last year. If I get in, I will dance naked on the table. There will no photos.

My girls are living on popsicles and pizza.

10 comments:

Peter said...

"Note to self: it’s not always the most talented who produce the greatest work but those who are willing to take risks, even if it may, for a moment make them appear less talented." I totally agree with this.

Lyle Daggett said...

I totally agree about taking risks too. Most of the poetry I like, I like because of the risks it takes; similarly, the poetry I don't like, I mostly don't like because it doesn't take risks, it tries to play it safe.

When I write poems, I try most essentially to get at something I didn't know was coming in the poem, some surprise, something I was waiting to say that I wasn't expecting but that is clearly true once I write it; and, I always leave one or two rough spots, loose threads sticking out, unfinished things. (Rocks are interesting; billiard balls, though highly polished, are dull.)

early hours of sky said...

Peter, I am glad you agree because I stuck in on my forehead;)

Lyle, I am taking your ball quote and turning it into a bumper sticker.

Clifford Duffy said...
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Ivy said...

Congratulations on the acceptances! You rock, T.

early hours of sky said...

C- as Salvador Dali said, I have no fear of perfection, I know I will never reach it. Oh and you get ten points for quoting Sarte at me, it’s the name of my invisible dog;) And I will try to post but the book is beating me to death.

And Miss Ivy, so nice to see you. I’ve missed you.

Patry Francis said...

Yes to the desire that makes poetry possible.
Yes to dancing naked on the table.
Yes to popsicles and pizza.

Yes, yes, yes!

Clifford Duffy said...
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early hours of sky said...

Darling you have met the quote queen especially when it comes to painters. There is no difference in what type of artist you are or how you define yourself Pollock –“It’s all a big game of construction, some with a brush, some with a shovel, some choose a pen.”

And yes Patry, I have danced on the table naked but I am happy to say, none of the three times involved publication;)

Clifford Duffy said...
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