It's lovely to be writing again!

I spent Monday night working on a book review for my poet-friend Meg Kearney's new heroic crown of sonnets titled Cardiac Thrill. It's a fantastic little book, a cycle of sixteen poems (one prelude, the rest is the heroic crown). The internet had blinked off, and I could not possibly be more grateful. Most evenings, I am tired, and I convince myself that I need to dull my senses with television. Granted, good TV (Poirot, Father Brown, etc.)-- but it's still a soporific. I could not be distracted by researching yet more AP-related stuff, either, which is an ongoing endeavor. All I could do is focus on the long-overdue review I owed to MicroLit Almanac. And I am so glad. 

I wrote and wrote, thought and thought, and revisited the poems. I revised a little. Then, because the internet was still off (and was throughout the entire night), I could not send it to the editor. Which means, of course, that I was able to look at it with fresh eyes again in the morning. I revised a bit here and there, then sent it off. Cat Parnell, editor extraordinaire, liked it, and it'll appear on Friday. That's gratifying, since I have not been able to write much more than blog posts-- and even those have been a bit stultifying.

The other day, my poet-friend Beth Kanell posted a photo that really resonated with me; she has been posting fall photos daily, and some of them really evoke the season, both the physical landscape and the emotional one as well. I got her permission to use a line she wrote with one of the photos, and amazingly, I got a draft written! And it's not bad! I'm grateful my muse is talking to me again. 

What got her talking? Maybe it was the marathon copying-out of Whitman's "Crossing Brooklyn Ferry" I did the other day-- all seven pages of it. Maybe it's the season. Maybe I'm finding ways of coping with the sustained angst that has been dampening my spirits for almost a full year now. Likely, my muse is done pouting, and that is something I am super happy about. 

In just under two weeks, I'll be embarking on a new challenge: writing the long poem. I am taking a four-session class with my poet-friend Dawn Potter online, and her classes are always, always generative and sustaining. I've never written more than a page or so of any poem. It kind of scares me, but in the way that I have to peek from behind my mental couch and see what's coming in the door anyhow. I am hopeful that my muse and I can engage in a way that is exciting and daunting and scary and awesome, all at the same time. I have ideas for a long poem, but I have not one dang clue how to get into it. I made notes on the Whitman (it was for this class that I copied out the poem, all nine sections of it)-- I noticed some things he was doing, and how he kept looping back and looking deeper, then taking in the minutiae and blowing them up large. Over and over again, but still pushing the narrative forward to places that had nothing but everything to do with the ferry crossing of the title. 

See? I can read the work. I can see what's being done. I might even have a clue about why the poet is doing what he is doing: but can I do it? 

We'll find out. 

Anyhow, it's great to be writing again. I have another book review lingering on the horizon, and the poet's work is beautiful, sad, joyful, energizing, and very accessible, so I am pleased to be working on it. Stay tuned, eh?

Have a good day, and please, hold your favorites closer each day. Things are crumbling around us, and we are pretty much all we have.

C