Category Archives: writing

poetry, writing

nothing less renumerative

“…I spend most of my time writing poetry, for example, and there is nothing less renumerative.”

Vikram Seth, in the GUARDIAN. Did you know he was writing a sequel to A SUITABLE BOY and not tell me? You have to tell me these things.

I have the greatest respect for Seth (I am kind of a superfan of his – and I took a seminar with him, once, and I know that he walks the walk) but poets have to stop acting like they took out the patent on poverty. In that particular competition, poetry may have a full house, but theater has four of a kind.

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writing

Now that

I have met a real Martin (he didn’t look like a hologram), I can’t continue using the name “Martin” for the character I was planning to. It’s time for the Internet baby names game! I see, for example, if I want to stay with M, that I could name this person “Maaz,” which means “wooden.” Or “MacFarlane,” which means (wait for it) “son of Farlan.”

I definitely get into name patterns. I remember a time in a college playwriting class where one of my co-workshoppers had named all of his characters things that began with A – Angel, Alejo, Alejandra, etc.

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poetry, writing

there is no meaning without form, there is no meaning without form…

I am not being very formal these days, not by my old standards. But I am using a lot of seven and nine-line stanzas. That’s something.

Hey, maybe it would be useful to make a list of poetic/formal things I like and don’t like.

This is an exercise that R, a friend from Poland, told us he performed with his NYC experimental theater company. They were worried that their style was getting too repetitive. So they made a list of everything they hated – it included things like musicals, one-man shows, and Shakespeare – and they decided to do productions including everything from the list they hated. It really stretched them. I think it’s a great idea.

Maybe I can have my students do this? I suppose the problem with it as an introductory exercise is people who are approaching poetry writing for the first time, or who have never really thought about technique, might not have any formal preferences. I wouldn’t want them to feel bad about that.

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Baltimore, writing

wrapup

At any rate, after having some of these thoughts, not all of them, but many, I wandered back home, made dinner, did laundry, and emailed about apartments. Today I am watering plants and, perhaps, exploring Hampden, another neighborhood close to campus. Tonight there is a party with some of the Hopkins medical resident folks.

I’m really surprised by, but also pleased by, the content of all this stuff I’m writing. It would be nice if, being back in school, I could figure out some of these ideas I left lying in a heap of rhyme in 2004. I’ve been blogging for an hour, but it’s been mentally productive blogging.

Must remember to also write some poems. 😛

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chicago, location, ovhd, poetry, writing

Speaking of roses

After a long dry heartless and unfathomable spell of silence I thought of another line of a poem last night – I thought that the stars were scars on the sky’s face. Although this is a personification, it does not bother me, because it is a comparison both in rhyme and in content.

It’s probably not good for anything. When you take time off and have to start up again you always think of such bland stuff. Stars, roses, the moon – too much poetry about all of them. Blah.

Speaking of roses, I was in Letizia’s on Division last week, which may as well be last year for how different it is from this week, and a man was handing out pink roses from his garden to all the girls in the muffin line. Chicago springtime – exuberant. Excessive. My friend from the yoga studio calls it “overcompensating,” and she makes it sound like she’s talking about a short man with a big car.

I took a rose, and the man behind me struck up a conversation about roses, and he couldn’t remember the Shakespeare line he wanted to remember, which I was able to supply to him, having assisted on ROMEO AND JULIET.

“A rose by any other name would smell as sweet,” I said.

He looked at me like I had memorized the OED. I have never impressed anyone so much with so little.

Sometimes I think that if I could only remember everything everyone has said to me, all the conversations with strangers – like the guitar player in the Seattle train station, like the Coors employee in Colorado, the woman in the bathroom in the basement of the downtown Chicago library – I would have enough material to write for the rest of my life.

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writing

been a long time

I haven’t known how to blog lately.

I did not write the scene that never gets written at B’s house. The next day, sleep-deprived, I wrote it, and it turned out to be the worst thing I had written all quarter. Maybe there is a reason it never gets written.

This is a lesson I haven’t learned but keep seeing: stop making rules for yourself of what to write. Write what is easiest. Stop following the rules. And making up new “rules” doesn’t count. I don’t know if this is a lesson everyone needs to learn, but I have learned the converse.

I guess this means I have to stop worrying about what kinds of comparisons are “the right” kinds of comparisons. I started a train of thought today in which a soul was like a child who wouldn’t eat and I just let myself have the thought without stepping on it because it was a bad comparison. Sometimes, the only way out is through piles and piles of bad poetry.

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workstyle, writing

settling in for the night

Two expatriate Californians, two MacBooks, two hopeless tasks. I am at B’s house on Addison writing the scene that never gets written till Friday night, trying to write it sooner by being at B’s house. B is trying to apply for a job, and thinks me being here will help. We’ll see about that.

Sitting in one armchair with my feet on the other makes me remember nights – multiple – sleeping in this arrangement, last year. That must have been at someone’s house, working on some play, but I don’t know which one.

B stacks piles of job applications across the coffee table. I blog.

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metablog, writing

it seems like

I can only write/blog in the appropriate grumpy tone which all writers should have when I am actually happy. When I’m really feeling that way, I can’t write at all. Everything is wrong – the keys, the pen, everything.

But the most disgruntled, self-serving, whiniest and most maudlin writing is better, better, better than no writing at all. Even if the posts sound like I HATE THIS NO COMPARISONS THING IT MAKES ME ANGRY WHO SHUFFLED THIS MESS otherwise.

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