Monday, February 20, 2006


I went to see the film Capote last Friday night. It was a haunting film. The whole next day I kept blurring in my mind between Truman Capote the real writer (not that I knew him personally or anything!) and the actor playing him in the film (who did an amazing job.)

It made me miss being a writer in new york. That city is a place of constant stimulus (no offense Cleveland). It also made me miss gin and tonics (until of course the end of the movie where the afternotes imply that he died from complications of alcholism). The main premise of the movie is that Capote was never able to deal with the fact that he essentialy used a horrific event, and the people involved in it, to write a great story. And something about that got under my skin.

I think as a poet, you always fear how much autobiography someone might read into your work. I know I rarely let my mother read my poetry for this very reason -- she'll read my poems vorasiously as if they were my diary. And my poems are anything but biographical. There are pieces of truth in there. But useally, those pieces are so mosiaced between what real and what's not, the real story would be tough to boil out of it.

Sunday, February 12, 2006

I just sent out 8 submissions. It was a bit of a frenzy. I'm procrastinating working on my questions for my comprehensive exam. I try to send out every time I get rejected and I got two rejection letters this week. I wonder if anyone ever feels good about submitting? My poems look so different to me when I am reading them over an trying to decide (usually on a whim) which poems fit the journal or contest I am applying to. They just don't ever seem as shiny and bright as I thought they looked when I finished them! Perhaps others have a method to their madness of submission?

Monday, February 06, 2006

Oh a silent house! Finally. The kids are in bed. I am finally by myself at my writing desk. These momments always make think about that William Carlos Williams poem "Danse Russe":

If when my wife is sleeping
and the baby and Kathleen
are sleeping
and the sun is a flame-white disk
in silken mists
above shining trees, --
if I in my north room
dance naked, grotesquely
before my mirror
waving my shirt round my head
and singing softly to myself:
"I am lonely, lonely.
I was born to be lonely.
I am best so!"
If I admire my arms, my face
my shoulders, flanks, buttocks
against the yellow drawn shades,--

who shall say I am not
the happy genius of my household?

I have finally finished a poem again! And had my reading list approved. Now if I could only get my son potty trained...