Make Up For A Bad Poem With An Epigraph*.

One disgruntled parent sent an e-mail after a Snicket reading which read: “I was hoping that my kids would learn something about the writing process and all I got was ego and performance from you.”

.”And I thought,” says Handler, “That is the writing process. You’ve got ego and performance and that’s pretty much all there is. It’s you thinking that you have a story to tell, and it’s performance, which is going out and doing it. The rest of it is just ink and paper.”

– old salon interview w. snicket/handler

Ketchup:
1) Saw EURYDICE again over the weekend – this is the show at Single Carrot on North Ave where I got to do a chorus workshop for the Stones. This was the third time I’ve seen it. Closing weekend is sold out.

2) I had the opportunity to read some of my poems on Monday, which was fun. I read five depressing poems and one funny one. It was, I would argue, both egotistical and performative. The funny one, I realized, was sort of related to a poem I wrote for me, X, and A to read aloud at the end of TASP2 (2001), titled “I’m So Gone, I’m Not Even Here.”** Not in subject matter or form, but in funny. What kind of poet would I be if I had read five funny poems and one depressing one? A more popular one, I suppose.

3) And today I led a workshop at a high school in Towson on – yes! Greek choruses! This time in the Ted Hughes version of Agammemnon. Every time I get to do that, it makes everything worth it.

* By the way, an epigraph is the quote at the beginning of the poem, and an epigram is a catchy phrase, like this one: “Odi et amo. Quare id faciam fortasse requiris. / Nescio, sed fieri sentio, et excrucior.” Thank you, Wikipedia, I mean Catullus.

**I wonder if a copy of that thing is buried somewhere in the one remaining box of papers I have yet to unpack.