Poem: Post Yusef Edit

I haven't been very good at blogs this semester though I'm trying to keep abreast of the book club. If any of you haven't joined it and you're interested, we're reading Bill Bryson's biography of Shakespeare this month and next month Cormac McCarthy's The Road.

But...I've been slaving over my thesis all semester, looking for a post-graduate job, and doing my internship at 30 Rock. My mind feels taut. But I turned in the first draft of my thesis to Charles Simic a few weeks ago and he just gave it back to me yesterday. He said I have some "marvelous poems" and a "very strong manuscript". Those two phrases are buoying me up right now.

I've never wanted to finish school but this semester has put me at my wit's end. I feel like I want to finish up my book for publication and just send it out and stop writing poetry for a while. Just for a little while. Write something else. Something funny. With less worrying about line breaks.

Then after enough time, a month or two, come back to poetry like coming home to my family dog.

Here's something I worked on with Yusef Komunyakaa the other day and I think his suggestions were invaluable to it. He helped me pare it down.


Letter to James #1: Growth Rings

To an Older Me,

You have issues of blood.
You are our family’s hope,
have grown to be a reckoning
stone, an axe, an ocean.
If these are men at all,
meet them on their own ground.

The edges have no doubt dulled for you.
If you sleep full-grown and unafraid…

then you don’t remember how the sun was a pendulum,
how egg thin the doors and walls felt, how laughable
was glass, how phones, even the speed of dialing
three numbers seemed too long, the minutes before
the cops reached us to stop the things He would do.

Remember yourself.
Five feet of slim stalked limbs and glass cased eyes.
Not enough skin to block a man from coming inside.
My biggest hope is that you’d grow into them,
against them, a tree, you up and among them,
with stature like a tree, with bark like a tree,
and all beneath be poised lightning.

If you’ve read this more than once, you’ve forgotten me.
How worn this page is will be your barometer.
Still, I won’t let you go.
Not if you haven’t done it.
Knowing me as I know you,
each word will rattle chains until you answer me.
In whatever life you’ve dreamed up.

You, 14

A Very 90s Halloween

So Val and I were planning on being the 1974 Romanian gymnast team. It didn't come together in time so Valerie and I brainstormed on famous couples. Some ideas were:

Ying and Yang
North and South America
Hydrogen and Oxygen
War and the Deficit
Cagney and Lacey
Law and Order

We were almost Todd and Sarah Palin but Val came up with something we could both do with natural awesomeness and minimal expense. Kurt Cobain and Courtney Love.

So here's some pictures from Halloween. These low light shots turned out the best.

I'm thinking of the lyrics to Drain You. Read it in my eyes.

We're sleepy. Halloween was a long night of watching Tranvestites.

Oh, and that first picture on my blog was our night at the 30 Rock Premiere Party. One of these days I'll be able to post stuff about my job at 30 Rock. Have a good election day tomorrow! Vote, you savages!