Retreat to Writing (and Some Fabulous Early Fall Swimming)

Some of the notes I wrote to myself in a random way last weekend (a writing retreat):

• Do I ever want to talk to myself about style? I think I am thinking about the crazed kind of quality (and I think I am diminishing it to call it crazed) of poems like “At Home in the Middle” or “If the Dead Could Just Hang Around.” The lecture poems I don’t have to understand why they’re put together that way. Aunt B—maybe like putting a broken vase back together—pieces and lines.
• When things come back try sending out grouped work which I said I would do and didn’t—food poems (ketchup!), lecture poems, Cleveland poems.
• I know the poem-a-day thing in October is foolish time-wise. But maybe I’ll do something different. Maybe each day I will work on some broken poem. Go through stuff and find things to improve. –“Something about Darkness” surely, the one about miniature golf.
• Tweak Aunt B still—make a list of concerns.
• length from section to section
• “voice” of author’s notes
• I’m pretty sure I don’t want it to be longer
• do I want to Cleveland it a bit more?
• there are many things I didn’t put in. Could some be included in existing sections? “What are You Going to Do?” “I just stood there.”
• why is Aunt H so rich for me lately. Maybe it was just being in the continual presence of her decay.
• I like repeated last two stanzas in each
• something about confessional
• something about wondering why her mother never visits?
• the boundary dispute relationship with her neighbors
• what did being a woman mean to her?