Repeated three times, words become flat like water. --Chinese proverb
Here's the problem with my poetry/MFA--I feel that I am repeating myself. There is so much emphasis on revision (which is emphasis I am inflicting on myself) that I am sick of all my poems. Does this happen to anyone else?
Maybe I should put my poems to the boil like lab frogs, or freeze them like icicles?
I've already tried putting them in vases, glasses, beakers (rewriting them in forms) and this only intensified the problem... What does one do? Inquiring minds want to know.
I wish I had a private income and could just take a summer off. I want to work on writing and work in some time to exercise. Compared to so many people, I am lucky to have 2 jobs I like, but man, it's expensive for us to all be in college. Sometimes, I wish my son and I were both tuition-free. (Harvey has finished, but now there are student loans--AAARGH. Thanks to the infinite wisdom of our state government, after receiving his master's degree and a raise, he now brings home $15.00 more a month after his inflated state taxes are deducted). We are trying our best to pay Daniel's way completely so he doesn't start off adulthood with that burden of student loans, or if he chooses them, they can be for an advanced degree. What we'll do in 10 years when Raleigh heads off to college is anyone's guess. I hope she goes to the school of her dreams, because neither Harvey nor I ever did that. Our parents did not pay our way. Mine were helpful, as long as I went to the local college (where I had a free ride). His parents were in no position to pay for his college, but his grandmother did help him out till we got married (his junior year). Then he was "PAMELA'S PROBLEM." Hahaha. If all of my problems were as wonderful as that one, I would not be having this pity-party.
4 comments:
"I heart you. The Sabres are awesome. I hate my poems before I write them."
-- A. J. Patrick Liszkiewicz, Three Reasons Why Pam Should Let Me Into The Party
I heart you right back. The SABRES are awesome. I hate my poems before/during/after writing them. except my sestina (my current favorite) and my cigarette poem, which is the only poem of mine Bill Matthews ever liked. Or maybe he just liked cigarettes. I dunno.
Please pass the baton.
Thanks for your post. You make some excellent points about contentment, which is something that my husband's family passed on to him. My family was much more materialistic/money-oriented, and that's a trait I try very hard to suppress. "No idea but in things" shouldn't be relevant to how I see the world, but it is a large part of how I was reared.
Why that "A" is there beside Pamela--I have no clue. That's not an initial!
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