Something Old, Something New

In 2015, I assembled a couple of chapbooks with old poems, and sent them around to a couple of contests. Predictably, neither of them found a home. Collections I've published in the past have never been based around a theme, or even written at the same time. Poems in the past have come to me one by one, and the only discernible theme has been, "me, me, me."

I did try a couple of years ago to write poems around the theme of horses. As it turns out, I had a tenuous connection at best with these beautiful creatures, although growing up on Long Island, next to a corral and next door to my grandfather's barn, they were common as squirrels. Of course, that very estranged relationship could be what I was supposed to be writing about in the first place, and not just a bunch of portraits of, "Horses I Have Known."

So, I have four or five decent poems about horses, and Long Island, and childhood. I have other poems about childhood too, so my last attempt at putting together a manuscript from poems I've already written will be to combine childhood poems with horse poems. This could work. Again, they have been written over twenty or thirty years, so they will require major revision to hang together, in my opinion. So, that project is in the pile.

This year, I decided to write one poem a month with the starting off point of current events in my life. The weather seems to open most of them, but after warming up, I think I've come up with eleven (so far) decent poems. These, perhaps with a couple others that I wrote outside of this exercise, should make a decently cohesive chapbook. As I wrote them, I just typed them up and put them in a folder, so perhaps my memory of them is a bit rosier than is warranted. We'll see in January.

I began a rather experimental project too, inspired by the works of Katrinka Moore, Anne Gorrick, and Adam Tedesco, among others. I stumbled on an old paperback copy of Valley of the Dolls over the summer. I copied ten random pages, then cut out pill-shaped chunks from the middle. I then switched around the cut pieces, and typed up rough, abstracts drafts of ten poems. I intend to make each successive draft looser and less connected to the original gibberish, but of course the results make more sense than you would think. This seems to be a good project to jump into when I can't think straight, or I'm too tired to write a "real" poem. Not thinking straight is absolutely required for this kind of word play. 

Basically, I am cutting myself some slack over the holidays, concentrating on relaxing (!) and enjoying the season. I'm also planning a trip to Florida in mid-February, via Amtrak, a less stressful mode of travel for both myself and my Roommate. I'm letting life lead for the time being. The poems wait, will wait, have waited, will be waiting. And will demand to be written when they will, always.

Submit! Submit! OK!

              In the last few months, I have been filled with a new sense of urgency. It’s a double-edged energy, however. The more I see the futility in activities like cleaning and decorating, the more I am inclined to involve myself in these temporary details. They are so important that they don’t matter at all, which makes them joyfully important. It’s a sort of weird circle that doesn’t do much for my organizational skills, but frees me to follow the flow of my mood.

            

          I am sifting through the material possessions I’ve accumulated, and discarding what no longer works for me. The Al-Anon literature goes. The pointy red shoes. The poetry books I have yet to crack. The jewelry that I got as gifts, and have never worn, but am afraid to get rid of in case the giver one day asks me about it. My eventual goal is to only have on hand items that will serve my life and my writing in the future. I’ve cleared out old files, gotten rid of tax returns older than seven years (mine went back twenty, as if anyone would care). And, I am putting together chapbook manuscripts consisting of the thirty-plus years of poetry languishing in my careful files, organized by year, first draft (be it on a napkin or a coaster), and “final,” typed copy. 

            In this new push, no version of a poem is final. I am grabbing poems by theme and style, although the ones written even five years ago are very different from the way I’m writing now. I am revising quickly, trying to bring the group into some harmony. I don’t yet know how successful I’ve been. I’ve submitted one chapbook manuscript to two potential publishers, and am working on a second with a deadline of the end of July. A small collection of horse poems will be combined at some point with childhood poems for a more rounded perspective, but according to my records, they are still floating around at some publisher or another in a previous configuration. 

            New work is still being written, but it’s nice to take time to revisit the old, with the fresh eye of time elapsed to give you the objectivity required to tighten and slash what I’ve already produced. New projects, incidentally, include a new poem every month beginning with the weather, and concluding with the current events of that month. These I am typing and tucking away, and will deal with early next year. I am hoping by the very fact of their similar origins that there will be a natural cohesiveness, another chapbook. 

            I have been inconsistent about submitting work over the years. With the Internet Times upon us, I no longer have an excuse. First drafts are always in longhand, preferably on yellow legal pads, but now second drafts are in the computer, stored on a flashdrive, and printed for the old paper files. I have mastered Submittables, and I understand how useful it must be for the little mags. I no longer discount online zines as not rrreeeaaallly being “published.” 

            I continue to research the Ziegfeld Follies of 1919, and am aiming for something to be completed by its one-hundredth anniversary. I’m not certain of the voice yet there. I hope to pull together a presentation of Kingston, NY poets to help fill the new performance space at the Art Society of Kingston. And then there’s that darned memoir…. 

Notes on Process, Part I

    Last year I tried to write a chapbook about horses. It seemed like a natural subject. I grew up surrounded by horses. As a kid, my grandfather exercised thoroughbreds at Aqueduct. My father got a 
license to train thoroughbreds in middle age, and for a few years pursued that dream pretty actively, with
mixed results. There was a corral next to the house where I spent the second half of my childhood. Horses were as common as squirrels or sparrows. So, naturally, one would think I had a treasure trove of memories to draw from, and combined with the hindsight of 50+ plus years, several volumes of horse poems were surely just waiting for me to extract them from the depths of my subconscious.

     As it turns out, not really. I have rarely written with a theme in mind, although I respond well to prompts. Prompts, however, only lead me back to myself. I am an expert at making a conversation come back around to me, me, me, and prompts are the first sentence of poetic conversations. For this chapbook, I started with only the vaguest idea-- something to do with horses. The few poems I attempted that dealt primarily with horses were drawn from my memories of them. I do not see many horses in my day to day life at this point. The poems are imprecise, dreamy and totally rootless. I always meant to go out and find some real horses, to add some fresh observations to my ancient memories. I never even got around to Googling the damn things.

     What I discovered is that my connection to horses is superficial at best, despite close proximity for almost two decades. My sister turned out to be the cowgirl in the family, and still rides today whenever she gets a chance. She has a beautiful barn in her backyard, and her property is adjacent to a state park. She's got an amazing amount of room to ride in a suburban Long Island neighborhood.

     I was afraid at first, and never overcame that fear. As a kid, we were led around my grandparents' corral on Princess, an sedate Palomino who was the last of the many horses my father and his siblings grew up with. I'm sure I pulled out a few hairs from her brittle blonde mane, I held on so tightly. Now that I'm older, and that much more aware of the consequences of a fall, I am all the more frightened.

     The best poems to come out of this effort are not about horses at all. They are about horse people, family, friends. They are about the affect horses had on others, and about the affect others had on me. One
poem is about a gold charm I have in the shape of a horse, and what it symbolizes. Another is about my grandfather, who died when I was 13 at the age of 57. We had very little in common then, and less now. Of the group, maybe five poems are worth reworking and sending out to find a home somewhere.

     Ultimately, they are Long Island poems, which I will never stop writing. They fall in line with the theme of my life. Poetry, writing is the way I explain myself to others, and to myself. It's a way of sorting out the pieces of the past, and clumsily ordering the future. Horses are certainly a part of my life. Just not enough to inspire more than a few poems to add to the archives.

*Follow Your What?*

I saw the new documentary about Joseph Campbell (really, more of a rehash of Campbell's basic philosophies as interpretted by various self-help and likewise gurus) the other night at a local independent theatre. Center for Symbolic Studies and Campbell biographer Stephen Larsen apologized in advance for the film's shoestring budget. "Don't expect Steven Spielberg," he quipped. But perhaps it was those limited funds that made the film all the more moving for me. Children in costumes gathered perhaps from their own play supplies were used to dramatize the various concepts and the basic path of the Hero, a core image of Campbell's work and the common thread he found in most of the mythologies of the world.

Sprinkled in were clips from some of the many Hollywood films that incorporate the Hero's journey. Many might surprise you, such as "Casablanca" and "The Wizard of Oz". The latter should not have surprised me, since for years I've recognized its blatant similarities to "Star Wars." George Lucas makes no secret of having based Luke Skywalker's adventures on Campbell's work. The Hero's path is circular, and includes confrontation, evolution and passing the story along. In Hollywood circles, this formula makes for easy multiple sequels. In real life, the journey is not so clear cut.

"Follow Your Bliss," is the ringing refrain in Campbell's writings and interviews. But what if your bliss is just not commercially viable? What if you've spent the first fifty years of your life picking away at the edges of it, fitting in all the other journeys around it that seem to have brought you to this brick wall? Poetry is truly the only activitiy that I feel totally alive during, totally engaged. I am certainly not the best poet in the world, nor will I ever be. As I age, I do, however,have more and more to share in my own work. I have been on a few paths, many of which have felt like less than heroic endeavors. Poetry has never been my primary concern, but it has been the thing that makes most of the rest of life tolerable.

Over the last few months, these passings in my life have served to not only scare me away from toying with the romantic notion of ending my own, but to encourage me to cut away the extraneous clutter that has accumulated around me and devote more time to the heart of it all. I will never be in a better position financially, even with unemployment as my sole income at the moment. My mortgage is miniscule, and my wants are truly few. I have a basement to clear out, papers to put in order, poems to write. The office is next, to organize and truly make into a space of productivity, not merely impressive looking storage!

I still look for a day gig. I have to. "Follow Your Bliss," simply won't pay that tiny mortgage, and unemployment is bound to be cut off sometime. But I do have the time now to get a few projects back on track. I am well into the horse chapbook, the first collection I've done writing to a theme instead of putting random poems together after the fact. I am also thrilled to have two other chapbooks coming out this year. Still, I must be somewhat practical.

Can I hold bliss in my heart, know what's the fire that drives my engine while still spending my days raking the yard and washing dishes? Are these things all part of the one and same journey? What can I tell others about the paths I've taken so far?