compiling a manuscript

this morning i sat with my words, listening to them. feeling them run through me again. remembering their power. hearing their voices. and understood, it is time. there is another poetry manuscript class starting in october, and i vowed not to take the class unless i had a new manuscript to workshop. today i begin compiling that manuscript. it is what i do. who i am. my work deserves to be read.

i have been silent and still of pen and mind, for some time. i have spent a great deal of time in the river of late. feeling the current carry away from me all that i have had to let go. so many trials and tears, now gone. i am clean. set free. in this unclouded state of mind, i will begin to piece together the second aspect of the narrative my work is constructing. drawing some old, and weaving in some new, to continue this journey for readers.

i understand art is utterly subjective. saturday at the guggenheim, standing before canvi that left me scratching my head wondering what is artistic about THAT. i realized, it is all subjective. beauty is subjective. what resounds with me, will not resound with you. the most beautiful woman in the world to me, holds little appeal to others (that is not an entirely bad thing when it comes down to it). the same works the other way around, what one finds dynamic, fascinating, captivating about me, the world finds, lackluster, dull, tedious. again, so much the better.

it is not capturing all eyes. it is about getting your soul expression in the world and letting it live or die by its own merit. flaws, strengths, speaking for themselves. let the world decide. though their judgment is not the last word. the last word is the act of release. that your creation is not festering away like some untreated wound, but it has come the complete cycle and stands a chance to catch the eye of the one soul that would be lesser without having experienced it. that is what art is to me. soul expression. and when it resounds with one other, the result is more art, perhaps not fine art (by that i mean, traditional methods, paint, sculpture, word), but rather, more love, more light, more peace in the world. she may reach out and her soul expression may be stopping to help an old woman on the freeway change a flat tire. that is her poetry. that is her art.

sometimes literal meaning can be so limiting. she is creating fine art with every stroke of her hand.

yes, that is it. so this collection, come together, will be turned out into the world for it to rise or fall on its own merits. and i will be grateful for having been a part of the process.