The Purpose of Stories, 3

Let’s take this dis­cus­sion back to the book. I’ve thought a lot about porta­bil­ity lately, and even about own­er­ship of words. Maybe the only way the story I’m writ­ing will sur­vive its book­ness is for me to release it entirely. My ver­sion of the story is just one. Yours will be next.

Thank you, Denver

I’m not a per­former. I enjoy the spot­light as any self-​​respecting Leo, but I think of myself as a poet, try­ing to do my poems the best ser­vice I can. So it’s a funny thing, real­iz­ing I miss performing.

Thanks for a great feature last night!

Thanks to who­ev­er­all came out last night. It was one of the best fea­tures I’ve done in years, and thanks in no small part to old friends. Some there in per­son, some in spirit. Also, con­grats to Ajari on pulling off an almost impos­si­ble syn­ergy of per­for­ma­tive arts. Faith reconfirmed.

I'm Featuring Tuesday

I’m help­ing to kick off a new Burque read­ing on Tues­day night, with Ben Bor­mann and another cat. 7:00 at The Danc­ing Cup, on the NW cor­ner of Cen­tral & Quincy. I might try a mix of Fresh­wa­ter and Well­wa­ter poems, or I might stick to one or the other. Help me say goodbye!

To Plan the Plan

Let’s recap a moment. Fresh­wa­ter Dredge was about a year of work. Well­wa­ter Dredge, about three. So far, Trib­u­tary Dredge  –  at 20 poems, 1⁄2 Fresh­wa­ter’s length; 1⁄3 Well­wa­ter’s  –  has taken six months, and is only begin­ning to reveal its fun­da­men­tal secrets. Each takes an eter­nity because I’m approach­ing it as an explorer. That, and I don’t have the lux­ury of writ­ing full-​​​​time. From the begin­ning, the plan has been to seri­al­ize the release of this book. I wanted it to pro­ceed as a saga, a back­ward nar­ra­tive, an epic in digestible bits. And I didn’t want to lose your atten­tion along the way. This open­ing look at 17^th cen­tury his­tory has me recon­sid­er­ing. So much of what’s coming…

We have… novella?!

When I was 14, I wanted des­per­ately to be a screen­writer. The thrill and dex­ter­ity of film, and my predilec­tion for things visual, promised some inter­est­ing sto­ry­telling. And the for­mat  –  rid­dled with cam­era move­ments and edit­ing cues – read like an inter­pre­ta­tion man­ual. A friend in high school even once slid me a script on the sly, osten­si­bly to fix up, spin and com­plete. Some­one else, con­sid­er­ably older, had writ­ten 40 pages, and the rest was mine. Foot, mouth. Mouth, foot. I came at scripts from poems. I just wanted to describe things. I wanted to write (and maybe make) films of images, moments. This thing in front of me not only involved a super­nat­ural killer on…

To Make it Official

This sum­mer I’ll be re-​​​​exploring Fresh­wa­ter Dredge. This means sev­eral (maybe many) new poems. What brought this on? My real­iza­tion that Fresh­wa­ter’s speaker hardly ever men­tions his brother (Well­wa­ter’s speaker). Writ­ing the lat­ter sharp­ened their rela­tion­ship for me to a mad­den­ing degree. And it’s pretty clear that I was miss­ing some­thing. Whether the new poems will join the exist­ing ones is up in the air, but it’s my sum­mer project. Thread­ing Well­wa­ter and reopen­ing Fresh­wa­ter for fur­ther dis­cus­sion. I may even post poems here. …which makes this a great time for you to pick up a copy of Fresh­wa­ter Dredge, if you don’t already have one! What bet­ter way to stay in the conversation?

"First Day of Seventh Grade" Published in the Weekly Alibi!

After the tor­rent of sad real­iza­tions that AWP came to rep­re­sent, here’s some good news, and on a Thurs­day, no less: This week one of our alterna-​​​​rags put out a poetry issue, fea­tur­ing 4 poets, a poem from each, and a lit­tle expla­na­tion of process. Go on and give it a read; I think you’ll find the poems as fas­ci­nat­ing (and qual­ity) as their expla­na­tions. I’ll post a pic­ture of the print ver­sion this week­end, which doesn’t suf­fer such a ver­ti­cal lay­out. Spe­cial thanks to Erin Adair-​​​​Hodges for helm­ing the story, and reader Gina for find­ing the web-​​​​version! AND, for spe­cial mea­sure, my friends at West End Press see their new release, Insides She Swal­lowed, by…

Interdimensional

First, a new broad­side is up at Face­book. Head over and grab your free poem! Sec­ond, I’ve been think­ing a lot lately about the broth­ers of Fresh­wa­ter Dredge and Well­wa­ter Dredge. I tend to think of them not only as real peo­ple, but liv­ing in a dimen­sion par­al­lel to ours. Though they’re the same age, one grows up in the 80s, the other in the 60s. Of course it hap­pened by what we might call the Clarke-​​​​Twain Prin­ci­ple of revi­sion. Beside all their other uncon­ven­tional inter­ac­tion with time, by grow­ing up simul­ta­né­ously in dif­fer­ent decades, they’re rec­on­cil­ing diver­gences in the revi­sion process itself. I think that’s pretty neat. It also makes me take the sequence of their…

When You Say Jump, I Say How Far

In 2007, the way I under­stood per­for­mance  –  and its pur­pose  –  changed. I started to see it as a remem­ber­ing: of why I wrote the poems; where I was, spir­i­tu­ally, when I found them; why they are impor­tant enough to reside in the world. It was the nat­ural result of drilling in, to find their pur­pose, in order to write them. It pro­duced the most reward­ing per­for­mances of my life. The Well­wa­ter Dredge one-​​​​man-​​​​show scares me where it splits from its pre­de­ces­sor. While they’re both told in per­sona, Well­wa­ter’s speaker is a much richer, more dynamic char­ac­ter  –  one who lends him­self more to the stage. Why on earth is that scary? I’m not an actor. Sure, I’ve taken an act­ing class,…