I just went to meet with Professor North to discuss some of my poetry, and it was quite a nice meeting. We discussed some editing that needs to be done on some of my poems, and here are some of the results…
You’ll get out
Go ahead, drown yourself in the sink
with white 2 o’clock light spray
all over the wall.
Take your cord with its carved raven
and the dress spilling red in the light,
leave your house behind you;
the air in front of you is clean.
no wonder you want to leave
for San Francisco
with the ocean spilling over its edges.
Ok, so this is probably one of my favorite poems I’ve written this year. It’s gone through two stages of editing now, I think. I feel quite satisfied with the results, although the middle stanza has caused me a lot of trouble. North told be about the original, not this version, that the middle stanza was unclear. I think I may have fixed that issue in this version… I mean, I could just take out the stanza altogether, but then I feel that the poem would be missing a key part. A key part of my vision, at least.
Go get tea
Boards covered in string to tie the universe up
with gaps to strain out the stars.
Leave the door open behind you, people will want to hear
the comets sing.
the shower got left on, a galaxy dies making a noise
like my shower.
In the hall, there’s Jupiter’s missing ring, I guess I was careless.
Night outside coughs,
giving me something to think about.
Down Ivry Street on my left, Miss Tragert sits on her lawn
making sketches of the air
with her pinky in the grass.
This poem was sort of a mess when I first wrote it… but I love this version. I definitely took out a lot… this poem exemplified one of my worst habits. Making my poems too…. too, as North says. Sometimes I go overboard with the metaphors and the imagery. I definitely recognize this problem, but I think it is unavoidable in my first drafts. I just need to clean my language up after I get all of the ideas onto paper, or onto the screen, respectively. Think clean, think simple… I need to keep telling myself that.
Those are only two of the… 5 or 6 poems I’ve edited today. I might post some of the others later. After we were done with my poems, I mentioned that I was excited for the Aphros submission deadline coming up. So, we started talking about Aphros and North says something along the lines of, “perhaps you will be one of the editors, or the editor, next year.” I couldn’t believe it! I won’t even be a senior yet! If this actually happens… I will be shocked. We shall see.
In other news, I am headed to Massachusetts tomorrow for Thanksgiving break. I can’t believe it’s been a year since… last Thanksgiving. I can’t even begin to fathom how much my life has changed since then. This really was a crazy time for me a year ago, and I suppose it’s a crazy time for me this year as well. It’s making me very nostalgic. I doubt being home will help my nostalgia whatsoever, but I’ll survive.
I can be so impulsive.
cheers–
