– and if it had already come, it would not be early.
Would it already were, since it must come!
for it will weigh on me more, the older I grow.
– Inferno, Canto 26, 10-12
Monthly Archives: November 2008
derevision
There is no use in continuing to pretend that I am, in any way, still actively revising the script of 13 WAYS OF LOOKING AT THE CHORUS, TO DIE IN ATHENS, or whatever on earth you want to call one chorus from every Greek playwright plus a few extra mashed up into an Oedipus v. Medea plot. I’m not. Or, rather, it’s not – and we’re not. The only word for that project is “not” right now. Every time I log onto this site and see, under “Ongoing Projects,” something about revising that script, I become discouraged. So I’m taking it down. The reading we had in Los Angeles was so successful that it seems a shame to not be able to work on it any more. But, for whatever reason, it’s not happening. I am only interested in writing more poetry these days. A lot of first drafts.
A revision is, I think, like a first draft – an impetus for it has to come to you. Barring that, there ought to be some kind of incentive to revise, like public opinion, an impending rehearsal, someone’s reading of it, or, (ha!) money. Or a sense that you know where you’re going. Or a sense that there is somewhere to be gone. Direction. Without that, you’re just messing around with the parts that already work, often making them worse.
There have been flickerings of interest in the script since the reading. People check in with me about it. One of the audience members even recommended me to a literary manager at a theater. But it’s simply not where my heart is at this moment.
I listen to it often, the recording. When I first had it, I listened to it daily, sometimes twice a day. These days I only play through it when my Ipod shuffles it to the top. I’m very proud of what we did. I don’t yet know how to do more. Worse yet, I don’t know why. What more is there to do? I proved the point I wanted to prove to myself, which was that the project was Possible. Whether or not it can, or should, be Produced, is a different kettle of P’s and R’s altogether.
I have less and less interest these days in bringing theater to a full realization, to staging, and more in simply writing. If there was some other collaborator on this project, someone who wanted to see it move forward, I think I would work on it day and night until it was perfect. But for both the composer and I, we have achieved what we set out to do. In the absence of a director, or something, there is no more to be done.
That’s kind of sad.
I’m sure I will work on it again one day, though I don’t know how. This, in a way, is a goodbye letter. Almost a breakup.
In the words of Edward Gorey (or Mr. Earbrass, the well-known novelist)
“It had begun to snow.”
the literal sense
A poem is about many things and the literal sense is only one of them. The rhetorical and musical features of poetry are as intrinsic to a formal poem as its ostensible meaning, which may be little more than a coat hanger; the dazzling gown draped on that hanger may be made of quite other elements.
– Stephen Edgar, in the April 2008 issue of POETRY Magazine, on translating Anna Akhmatova
I was rereading my old POETRYs and refound this quote, which I love. The hanger business is apropos – I just cut out the unused pages from a journal I stopped writing in 2001 to avoid writing about something sad. I am binding them, by hand, to one severed limb of a plastic coat hanger, to make a new journal. I haven’t done this since I made a blank book from a make-a-book kit as a kid, and that book was so pretty I didn’t want to write in it. This one is nice and ugly and serviceable.
and the hills of los angeles are burning…
From GoogleMaps: A massive brush fire, dubbed the “Sayre Fire,” has flared up in the hills above Sylmar. The entire area north of the 210 Freeway and north of the 5 Freeway near the State Route 14 interchange is under evacuation orders, extending east to Hubbard Street and Pacoima Canyon. The 210 Freeway has been closed in both directions between the 118 and the 5 freeways.
Created much-needed “Los Angeles” category with this post.
lessons from the windy city
– It is possible to fly. Just run in the prevailing direction of the wind, and jump.
– People do not tie their scarves in knots around their necks for fashion (“We wear our scarves just like a noose…But not cause we want eternal sleep…”-Regina Spektor), but rather, to prevent the scarves from being unwound by the wind. If you don’t wear them like that, you won’t have a scarf for very long.
– You really can feel the weather changing in your bones.
swooning sap
Poets must be proactive in placing themselves visibly at the centre of temporal concerns, and devising ways to influence the national cultural landscape and give poetry a strong role in our everyday lives. Subsidy must provide public platforms – be that the National Theatre or some separate, dedicated venue, with a linked social media presence – to allow those interpretations to be heard. Keats may have said that “my imagination is a monastery and I am its monk”, but it’s time for poetry to come out and play.
– Molly Flatt on the Guardian Books Blog: “Poetry needs to move out of the garrett for good”
I do love how British arts writers get to use the word “subsidy” in conjunction with imperative verbs, like “must.”
beyond domestic partnership
Words on CA’s Prop 8 from my friend and former Stanford RA, Li Han Chan. She put this in an email and I asked her permission to quote it:
Some people say the right to domestic partnership is enough, but really, it isn’t. While domestic partnerships, in law, grant same-sex couples all state-level rights and obligations of marriage — in areas such as inheritance, income tax, insurance and hospital visitation, every step requires extra documentation to prove the union is legit, and that domestic partners in fact do have those rights (e.g. if you want to visit your partner in the hospital, you’ll have to do much more than just show a small credit card sized marriage license.) This is what the 21st century LGBT version of “Separate but Equal” is like. We’re not even talking about federal rights yet, such as immigration.
now that’s advertising
I received some spam this morning with this subject line:
If You Can’t Stimulate The Economy, Stimulate Your Senses Instead.
What is the category for this, really? Advertising? Funny things with words? I think I’m going to call it “wordage.”
right now
Please help and sign the pledge to repeal California’s Proposition 8, which overturned the recently won right of gay couples to marry in CA, and made same-sex marriage illegal in the state, as of the 11/4/08 election.
We have to come together right now to say that we refuse to accept a California where discrimination is enshrined in our state constitution.
I have tried so many times to write on this subject and it keeps on stopping me – I feel so strongly that gay people should be allowed to marry that I am getting all tangled up in the emotions and not finishing the essay. But here are the notable anti-Prop 8 arguments, from ballotpedia.org.
– “Our California Constitution–the law of our land—should guarantee the same freedoms and right to everyone. No one group should be singled out to be treated differently.”
– “Equal protection under the law is the foundation of American society.”
– “Traditional Marriage” is a misleading term. Various marriage traditions, since abolished, have included: only allowing members of the upper class or nobility to marry; having marriages arranged by families without the couple’s consent; only allowing white people to marry; only allowing people of the same race to marry; and allowing one man to marry multiple women.
– Current statistics show roughly 50% of heterosexual marriages end in divorce. So-called “traditional marriage” is doing more to degrade the institutional of marriage than any expansion of marriage could ever do.
– Voter initiatives to amend the constitution should not be taken lightly; using them to take away rights from one group could open the door to voter initiatives to take away other rights, including religious freedoms and civil rights.
– The institution of marriage conveys dignity and respect to the lifetime commitment that a couple makes. Proposition 8 would deny lesbian and gay couples the opportunity to that same dignity and respect.
– “The freedom to marry is fundamental to our society, just like the freedoms of religion and speech.”
– When domestic partnerships are held out as an acceptable substitute for marriage, this is misleading. Domestic partnerships are not a substitute for marriage. The doctrine of “separate but equal” has failed throughout American history.
Dara Weinberg 