The Dredge Cycle

Recurring and Returning

Augus­tus Cae­sar: Many dreams come through the Gates of Ivory, Lycius, and they lie. A few dreams come from the Gates of Horn, and they speak to us truly. – Gaiman On the long-​​​​procrastinated advice of my friend Anders, I’ve been read­ing The Sand­man. Yeah, I’m enthralled. By con­trast, Cora­line reads more like fan fic than Gaiman. Here, his insights line the land­scape, and his sto­ry­telling, a lit­tle shaky at first, quickly climbs to top-​​​​notch. There are a lot of things worth dis­cussing, from the…

Quartering the Rope

I’ve been think­ing about nar­ra­tives lately. Lee, my direc­tor, has handed over a pre­lim­i­nary list of poems he thinks will, “for dra­matic action, inten­sity, favorites, etc.,” make a bet­ter show. If we ran the whole book, it’d come to about 2 hours, which we agree is no good. So Lee picked 28 of 63 to start things off. Thing is, there are whole sub­plots miss­ing, or punched-​​​​into and –out of. That doesn’t bother as much as it fas­ci­nates me. I’ve read plenty of books that…

Forward Movement

My direc­tor asked me to dis­till the list of musics I gave the com­poser to just 10 tracks. To sound­track the show, ide­ally. It’s been extra­or­di­nar­ily hard, of course, but I’ve come down to this so far: Yesoma (Cello)  —  John Zorn Modul  —  Pole Ten­sion  —  John Zorn Minor Swing  —  Django Rein­hardt Old Man  —  Neil Young Poppy Nogood (1968)  —  Terry Riley Slim Slow Slider  —  Van Mor­ri­son Mon­day  —  Jon Brion Satya­graha (Act 3, Conclusion)  —  John Cage, played by Bruce Brubaker Dis­in­te­gra­tion Loops 2.1 (excerpt)  —  William Basin­ski Hunt­ing Bears  —  Radio­head Good Night  —  Bea­t­les In my first few drafts, every­thing was heavy, slow,…

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.…

Conflict

First: it’s not lost on me that I’m writ­ing about con­flict on Hiroshima Day. While I’ve got no need to dis­cuss that here, I do think it’s apro­pos. Sec­ond: the new broad­side is up. It fea­tures no sub­stan­tial con­flict. It’s sweet, and you should add it to your man­tle. And here we go: I tried to write Well­wa­ter Dredge as a book free from con­flict. There were a cou­ple rea­sons for this: I’m pretty non-​​​​confrontational by nature, and writ­ing con­flict makes me uncom­fort­able. I was far…

To End at the Beginning

Tonight, mak­ing a few small, pointed edits, I saw a line at the start of Well­wa­ter Dredge again for the first time. It ties the book neatly in a cir­cle. Maybe a few oth­ers had seen it already; maybe I’m the first to make the catch. Regard­less, it’s a relief. It comes on the heels of think­ing strongly, again, about releas­ing the book myself. I have increas­ingly elab­o­rate design plans for it, and pro­por­tion­ately less faith in other pub­lish­ers. Sub­mit­ting Well­wa­ter is begin­ning to feel…

Threaded

Update: …and we’re there. The last few hours have been a whirl­wind. Well­wa­ter’s motifs are now estab­lished. I’m pretty sure it’s equal parts lame, weird, and so, so right that I almost cried rework­ing the cli­max. One more thread left to work in  –  maybe the most impor­tant one  –  and it’s back to lay­out for one more round of proof­ing among friends and edi­tors. I know I’ve gone on a lot about the process, and claimed it would go out to pub­lish­ers sev­eral times, months back. But with this,…

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…

Revelations

Now that the Big Edit is done, a few things have become clear: There are two (2) lines of direct dia­log in the entire book. How awe­some is that? They’re both from the speaker’s sis­ter, and neither’s espe­cially pro­found. But she being the only char­ac­ter who actu­ally speaks makes her both eerie and more famil­iar. I love it. The book’s themes are all in place, but they need more struc­tural rein­force­ment, more thread­ing. Not only is it unfair to ask the reader to remem­ber a little…

Weekending

Yes­ter­day I got the rare chance to hang with reader Ben over cof­fee, and even­tu­ally din­ner and some clas­sic Bill Hicks. Ben was around when Well­wa­ter Dredge was in its infancy, and his reac­tions to it as a full-​​​​grown book were fas­ci­nat­ing. I’ve lived in its quirks and stretches so long I’ve lost track of how the rest of the world sees it. Even my Surrealism-​​​​inclined peers think it’s a big bonkers. I think that means it’s time to put it in the world. I love…