The Dredge Cycle

Power in Small Numbers

We want our books to be the most excit­ing in the indus­try. We want our best work to invade oth­ers’ lives, mul­ti­ply our noto­ri­ety, earn respect among fans and peers. It’s nor­mal. We don’t want our best work called “pretty good.” After that much revi­sion, we want the sono­fabitch revered. It’s not the fear of fail­ure that’s got me down. I’ve got an out­ra­geously high stan­dard, backed by my editor’s, and when poems aren’t hold­ing their own, they get fixed or dropped. This book isn’t…

The Packrat and the Taxonomist

Two things: 1. I’m a sworn pack­rat. I’ve only ever defeated the instinct with greet­ing cards, which after read­ing I have no idea what to do with, and while trav­el­ing for long peri­ods. 2. Some­thing my 9^th grade Eng­lish teacher/​​10^th grade advisor/​​3-​​​​year var­sity foot­ball coach (I was the man­ager) said once that I’ve never for­got­ten: “We remem­ber things because we assign them mean­ing.” Like every­one, I have a store­house of child­hood mem­o­ries I can’t explain. That is, I can’t explain why I remem­ber them. When…

More by Way of Coincidence

Coin­ci­dence has been a huge force in writ­ing this book, from the project ori­gins to the end­less, almost freak­ish over­laps Pat and I share (was she best friends with my 10^th grade hon­ors Eng­lish teacher, when they two were but 21-​​​​year-​​​​old* pups at Yale? Tune in next week, same Dredge Time, same Dredge URL!) But what hap­pened last week­end may be hard to top for a while. A free­lance client, referred to me by the lovely Darby Phở­tos at the Har­wood Art Cen­ter, comes into…

Recording Begins Tomorrow

I’ll be record­ing Fresh­wa­ter Dredge tomor­row. The options are pod­cast or spe­cial release to the read­ers of this fine blog, whichever gets more chicks makes sense in the long haul. Of course, my mar­ket­ing brain’s about as sophis­ti­cated as a crow­bar; I’d love your ideas here. Keep your eyes open for tracks around Octo­ber. I fig­ure a release of 39 weekly poems will take me through May, and from there I may release some oddities/​​rarities that’ll never make it into the books.

Just Gimme More Time

It’s been decided. I’ll be in Albu­querque another two years. The Well­wa­ter writ­ing will be done in time for my 28^th birth­day. There­upon my (hope­ful) direc­tor and I will begin work­ing the one man show, likely a bit shorter than the book. I’m strongly con­sid­er­ing a pod­cast of the whole thing, with a weekly release of Fresh­wa­ter in antic­i­pa­tion of the new one. Record­ing could begin as early as this week­end. More on that later.

Things of the Beforehand and the Ongoing

2.5 years ago a thread appeared on the edge of my hometown’s his­tory, the his­tory like a very expen­sive sweater. Nat­u­rally curi­ous and count­ing myself a left­ist to the bone, I started pulling. All kinds of things started to fall out from under the sweater. I wrote a book of poems about the town as it appeared to me, as a kid, and broad­ened my expe­ri­ence to include events that didn’t hap­pen, for rea­sons I’ll maybe get into later. The book was called Fresh­wa­ter Dredge.…

Y’ever wrote something you didn’t understand later?

> Ever pub­lish it that way, in some unre­pro­ducible brain-​​​​state in which it made per­fect sense? I think I finally have this poem under con­trol. I mean, it’s a first-​​​​ish draft of the sec­ond take of a poem which had, in all, three poems in its sequence. Ha, wasn’t that clever. I’ve been try­ing to rewrite “Dreams and Streets II” for about a month and a half. I see hope now. I see the street names from the other end of the block.

Is the real bastard of second grade

know­ing that what you’re doing is so mad­den­ingly sim­ple, yet, so impos­si­bly dif­fi­cult? I mean Phở­net­ics work­books, mostly. But book reports, too. I remem­ber clearly think­ing how sim­ple it was to do, but how daunt­ing the pile of it, how lit­tle I wanted to do it.I mean, thank god for it, for the con­tent. But fuck if I’d teach my chil­dren that way.

The envelopes!

The vel­lum envelopes! The first box just arrived! Fuck yeah! ( )

Announcing... Freshwater Dredge

A lo-​​​​res approx­i­ma­tion: Front: :Back This is the cul­mi­na­tion of much of the last year’s work on a book of and about Welles­ley, Mass­a­chu­setts. At least, that’s where it starts. And ends. More than any­thing, it’s an explo­ration of mem­ory and iden­tity. And it’s the first of three. It’s now avail­able for pre-​​​​order. I’m doing the pre-​​​​order thing because this is an expen­sive project. Of all the books I’ve ever made, this is by far the most gourmet. Star St. Ger­main worked relent­lessly on the cover…