speak to me

i spoke to her briefly about you. told her what i could, and that i have been told to drop it. but i can't. i can't.

so, the story goes on. i will give it a while more. though, it is momentum carrying me at this point. i knew i had no strength left, and that forward movement must come from some other source. i am not sure if setting yourself up is considered another source, but i've done the best i can to arrange my life so that i end up where i want to be.

why wouldn't i continue with my education. my best friend, very well schooled, tells me that graduate school is another world. so, i need to just enjoy it.

i understand what they want of me, and fortunately, the poem commissioned of me will serve more purposes than i had originally foreseen. i turned it in jacked up, revised it, but only minorly and mostly because i had a prof demanding it.

so, i will continue in that vein with that poem, because it is a mythic piece i am not emotionally connected to. i like the poem, yes, but this poem will be my revision exercise, because, it still needs work, i can see that.

now to understand the distinction for me between what needs work still (though i've known from the start that this poem needs work, i just did the best i could in moment. usually, if someone interrupts the flow of a poem i'm writing, i lose the thread, but this poem. i had so much pressure to get it in that moment, i held that thread through the stream of interruption).

what i turned in and read at samhain though, was not my best work, it was what i could produce in moment. has the poem improve with subsequent revision, of course.

but the difference for me here is, i knew it needed revision when i wrote it. i was not emotionally tied to it being complete, because i knew as it was coming out that it wasn't. that is huge. i'm not sure other writers experience this, but i'm sure they do. i saw what was coming from my hand and knew it was not fully formed.

just like when i wrote my odysseus piece, i knew i dropped a line, i wrote it out and sent it saying,

i dropped a line.

then i picked up the line. it just came to me and fit so seamlessly into the poem that i had to let it ride.

that is revision for me. the poem has not changed since that incarnation because it is done.

they want me, the mfa program, to revise for the program.

i will, i guess i just need friends to commission works that i'm not wed to emotionally. the distinction for me is huge.

i did submit my seduction poems written for my dark muse for this workshop. i don't know why, those are finished. and i just want to hear what people say.

not sure what i'll read at the student reading either. again, need three rockin' minutes. who knows, maybe i'll write something new.