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?
