Yikes, that alliteration! Over time I’d have to learn that my poetry couldn’t stay proper if it was actually going to help me live. What has surprised you most about your dedication to this writer’s path? But poetry remains a place where I can keep secrets out loud. I like this question, with its implication that dedication is itself surprising. Sometimes I “wake up” from rough stretches in my life and am amazed by the way I’ve unconsciously rationed my energies towards the projects or opportunities that are most likely to sustain my writing life.Įven though I’m a Taurus, I experience myself as disloyal and impatient, so the evidence of my own steadiness always takes me by surprise. I think I haven’t done anything but then I see I’ve done the one thing that enables me to go on. I’m surprised to find that I’m a good enough mother to myself. On the other hand I’m surprised to find how vivid the lifelong torments remain. I guess when I was younger I thought I’d either quit or be cured. The Spanish word muchedumbre, which means something like crowd or throng or undulating mass of bodies. And then, relatedly, that Samuel Delany quote about the St. Mark’s bathhouse: “political power comes from the apprehension of massed bodies.” These readings or talismanic words inflect all I see, including the gulls at Deer Lagoon on Whidbey Island, where I’m in residency at Hedgebrook as I answer your questions. I’m inspired by their group choreographies, the way form is always being dispersed and reasserted when I observe the flock at a distance. I’m not even sure if they think of themselves as belonging together. Sometimes there’s an eagle in there too, cruising for a meal-eagles eat gulls. But the gulls can’t let that ruin everything. I guess I’ve been trying to think a lot about the powers and pleasures of crowds in tension with the urge to stand out or escape from them.īack indoors after my windy walk, in a different mood, I’m more inspired by the small-scale. Right now I’m wearing these two gold rings with little emeralds that my mother gave me a few weeks ago, in acknowledgment of my book deal.
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