I broke a pattern today. Deliberately, isn’t that how patterns are broken? I made a different choice. I said out loud, I am not the same person I was four year ago and I meant it.

Last night I went to see BrokeBack Mountain. It made me sad. Possibly b/c I was positioned between three people who were sobbing yet I did not. I don’t know why? I’m not a closet crier and yet sometimes silence is good.

In November I stood in a three block line to see Pride and Prejudice. I love that I live in a town where ppl read. Two girls were in front of us and they said, they couldn’t remember any lines memorable from the book, not like Romeo and Juliet. Blah, blah… we are all fools in love, I said. My date was not impressed. I thought it was pretty impressive. Okay, it could be I spent the rest of the evening moaning, “Where oh where is my Mr. Darcy?” That might be it.

Charles Wright has a damn fine poem in The New Yorker. Damn fine. Worth the whole price of the magazine. Also an interesting article about William Woodworth, how he was mocked so much during his writing career, how he has forty years of work no one has ever read, how he did his best writing in his thirties but even then he wasn’t really, ever respected in the literary community.

It is so interesting this whole career perspective. I always find it interesting when people say to me I'm the real thing. What does that mean? I mean, I get they are giving me a high compliment and I do try to take it as such, but the real thing? Does validation of work make it art? And if so, is it the artist’s own validation or the general community?

I love the poem “Chicken Little.” I wrote it three years ago before chicken poetry became popular. Yes, there was a rush. I’ve never published it…maybe b/c there was a huge flood of poultry poetry. I don’t know? But it still took me awhile to figure out that I could still be proud of it. I could still like it, that it didn’t need outside validation.

I'm not the same woman I was four years ago.