A clean sweep

Last month, somewhere past the exit to Bakersfield, I suddenly felt like throwing out all my poems—everything, except for the poems in the manuscript (and I'm even going to pitch one of those, to rewrite later or just plain throw away).

Recently, over on The Word Cage, Mary Biddinger asked about throwing away old poems. In her post, she drew a distinction between "outgrowing the poems" and "no longer meaning them."

If I can make that distinction for myself, I think I'm trying to outgrow my poems. For the most part, I still mean them, but I'm trying to open the way I approach a poem, to grow. And I felt that these old (some of them embarrassingly old) poems didn't reflect that. They were keeping me in the past.

So I spent yesterday dragging almost all of them into an Old Stuff folder, even filing away my OneNote drafts. I felt cleaner, lighter.

Then I dashed out to the store, brought home a pumpkin, and carved it up quickly.

This morning is November 1, which is one of my favorite days. Now it's time for me to take the plunge and start some new work, explore where my poems might go.

Do you ever feel like starting over? Does that make you feel exhilarated or scared—or both?

Absolutely subjective

And possibly rambling.

A few days ago, someone asked what I thought of A Village Life, the new book of poems by Louis Gluck. I had taken it with me on my trip, saving it until I had time to stretch out in the sun and immerse myself in it.

After a first reading, I felt a little disappointed. Like when you eat a really good meal, but it wasn't what you were hoping for. J.W. Marshall once said that a book of poems is like a record album—you might buy an album and if one or two songs are fabulous, you're happy—even if you skip most of the rest of them. That makes sense. Still, I felt something was missing.

I figured maybe I wasn't being fair. Maybe I read it through to quickly. So I started through again.

And I realized that some of the poems really took me with them. And others didn't. I took a closer look.

To me, the poems that feel strongest, the most satisfying, speak from the strongest voices. When Gluck is writing in a persona, as in "At the River," "Walking at Night," and "A Slip of Paper," the poems feel genuine, and I can feel a part of the poem.

The poems that are written more generally, such as "Pastoral," "Tributaries," and "Earthworm," first struck me as kind of detached but without any reference to the detachment, to why the poem is written in the voice of an outsider, often with an outsider's syntax. Even those poems are fierce, but the discord between their ferocity and their detachment wasn't working for me. As the speaker is outside, it put me outside of the poem.

Yes, I'm making a hell of a lot of assumptions here. Like I said, it's subjective.

And as I'm reading them over and over, they are growing on me. I'm starting to wonder whether my initial reaction was based on just a few words.

I'll keep backpedaling: It probably isn't fair for me to expect a poet, even a favorite poet, to write the poems I want him or her to. And that might be what I'm asking for—as though I hoped for the voice from Averno and the milieu of this village. Who do I think I am?

And maybe those are the poems that I need to write.

I'll keep reading through it, and I've learned a lot more about voice—or, at least, what I'm looking for in voice. Maybe even more about the you.

Have you read it? What do you think (about the book, about voice, about expectations, about life)?

More about You

A while back I wrote about how Linda Hull's poems invite the reader and include a "you" in a poem.

When I write my poems, I don't know who the you is. If I write in second person, the you is often a disguise for I (me), but that isn't the same as a dialogue, of telling someone a story, of sharing something. I want to explore that sharing more.

Sure, you're writing a poem. You're spilling your guts or your thoughts on the page, but that isn't the same as sharing something or confiding in someone—and hear I want to steer clear of the idea of confessional poetry, which seems to be more like the guts spilling.

But maybe not having a specific you is the most confessional poetry—a broad guts-spilling to the world. Not that that's bad, but it might be trickier, because the more people you try to talk to, the more likely you are to dilute your message. And if you (I) talk only to yourself (myself), are you excluding everyone else?

I think I write a lot of my poems with my primary reader/reviewer in mind. That might be to please her or it might be because of what I've learned from her. Is she the you, or is the you me, or the me I will be when I read the poem later? That doesn't sound like much of a conversation, and it doesn't sound specific enough to inform the writing, to strengthen it.

With the you in Hull's poems, a we grows. It's that invitation. But do all my poems need to be written this way? I also don't want this to sound formulaic. I don't think it is. At least, I don't think it needs to be, but when I talk about Hull, I worry that it's sounding like a formula, and that isn't what I mean.

I think a lot about audience. I know that some poets don't think about audience at all, and write purely for themselves. That's a choice, but it isn't mine.

Back to that question of who is the you? Is it different in each poem (even if it's currently inexplicit), and if I'm writing in a series, is it the same for each poem in the series?

If I write the same poem but with a different you—general reader, sister, daughter, husband, one friend, another friend—how will that change the poem?

At the Viceroy

Our little home away from home, in Palm Springs.

The view from the front porch.

The view from the back patio.

The back patio.

Another look at our front yard...

Visiting the neighborhood

Where we stayed in Pasadena, with wonderful people and their dogs and their cat. We threw the balls for the dog every night we had light.

Shiloh, a member of my entourage. (We don't have a dog, but we love to visit.)
Tom walking Body, the other member of the entourage, through the neighborhood.
Welcome to Pasadena!

Just another house in the neighborhood. (I tried to get a close-up, but it's hard to take a picture while holding the leash of a strong dog.)

We walked out in search of the Blacker House, and here it is.

Pictures from an exhibition in Pasadena

Here is our booth at the Pasadena Heritage Craftsman Weekend.

Here is the crush at the neighboring pottery booth. The first fifteen minutes is always a zoo, and Tom wanted me to get a picture.

We had a fun time at the show, and then we loaded all our furniture back on the truck (in two hours, which is record time!).

Congratulations to Kelli for winning the White Pine Press Poetry Prize. Kelli's work inspires me, and I'm looking forward to reading her new book, Letters from the Emily Dickinson Room.