Fizzy

I feel a little fizzy, but in a good way. I'm going away for 8 days to Lake Tahoe with four writer friends. This is something we've done before, and it is a little piece of heaven (except for the bear part). It is the kind of undirected time that writers long for. My quandary for the next few days before I leave is deciding what is my writing plan (and what clothes to pack since it might snow one day!).

• I really want to write some new poems, especially maybe in the new series I'm thinking about that has to do with jobs, working, the economy.
•  But I also am drawn to completing more of these extremely atypical funny aphoristic poems about men and women that I started when I was a little more bitter. 
• Also, I want to perfect the ms. I think it's the right order, been edited, been concentrated on plenty. But maybe a couple more walk-throughs.
•  And I've printed out an interview by Anne Carson that I think might direct my thinking--maybe not direct, but provoke--to new ways of making a poem.
• I'd also like to make a list of still viable poem ideas, reading through my jottings and notes that get left behind to see what might still be valuable.

Often, I'm an undirected poet working from the things that fly into my head from the world or that rise from my murky creative depths without conscious pre-planning. Note that I did say conscious since even when I'm just writing what occurs to me, there are clusters of themes and similar registers. But I don't want to waste this time.

Other years, I've written two long poems there (you know, numbered sections long). I also put a chapbook together there one year. And I think the link between these tasks and the week is how close to the matter I can remain, untroubled by electricity bills and commutes to work.

But also, other years, I've lain on the stone steps in the sun and just felt. But then I wrote a poem about that.