First Reading / Upcoming Revisions

My first reading from A Meditation on the Misplaced occurred on Friday, November 12 at Living Arts in Tulsa, as part of the Oklahoma Avant Garde Poetry Reading.

It's probably kind of surprising that such a thing even exists. Nobody would think we have art here, but we do. Walking around the Brady and Blue Dome Districts, I passed by about eight art studios, and I was really surprised.

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In other news, my goal is to revise the book by December 10th, when I imagine the semester must be ending for those in school. The revisions will be minor, fixing some formatting errors on italicized text by replacing them with scanned images of that text in my handwriting, as well as moving one page from the end toward the beginning. If I feel like it, I'll add some more writing in the end as well.

Ideas for New Projects

My digital camera doesn't work anymore, so I will rely more on the scanner for now, and develop a few rolls of film.

I have a bunch of Polaroids that didn't fit into the final version of A Meditation on the Misplaced, so I'll have to do something with those. I'm picturing small, handmade books, or at least ones that feature a lot of scanned in handwriting, doodles, and "marginalia." (See, I'm still obsessed with Susan Howe.)

Resurrect an old textbook and try to inject some life into it, and/or let its concepts inform my writing.

Write about the poetics of blending / merging in a way that (sort of) makes sense.

I can see relationships between many different things that interest me, and I want to express them, but sometimes it is overwhelming, and I don't know where exactly to go next. I think I'll let my mind take a stroll through Paul Auster's worlds of urban alienation for a while, and if my identity remains intact when I emerge, we'll see what happens :)

print error + new project concept

I made the PDF download free, and the book is now $20, to take advantage of a free shipping offer on Lulu. However, there are some black dots that show up in place of some italicized text, so I'm telling everyone not to buy it until I fix the file and clear up this error. Until then, please download and read it! (As far as I know, the PDF file displays all the text and no black dots.) I think it looks better on the computer screen anyway, because that's the way I've looked at it for two years! :)

My next project is to write poetry that mimics the actions of cells, especially mutation. That's all I know so far, because I haven't studied biology since about ninth grade. So I ordered an old biology textbook to help me start this new project.

I might publish a more extended version of A Meditation on the Misplaced later on. As I flipped through it tonight, I wished I'd made it longer. I think part of me still wants it to be as long as Howe's The Midnight- a good 170 pages instead of my meager 30.

My first book is available!

A Meditation on the Misplaced is now available for purchase here, on lulu.com.

The paper copy is $18.00 and the file download is $5.00. I almost can't believe I have the gall to charge money for my work. But I've been working on it for two years, and I don't expect people beyond my friends, family, and a couple of professors to want it.

Mostly, I'm happy to be done, and I'm finally proud of something I've accomplished! It is a senior project in the truest sense of the phrase, pulling together everything I learned in college, and especially showcasing everything I most loved.

One of my friends, who was an art history major, said it was worth the extra year and a half it took me to finish it. Although much more of that time was spent in procrastination / paralyzed fear than I care to admit, I don't think I could have produced this work last year. So maybe it is okay that it took so long. :)

I guess I finally have to admit that I'm a writer!

sunday morning soundtrack

sunday morning soundtrack

driving five over
shuffle softly pages fingertips
wailing muffled despair
shoes shuffle fall almost
moist mouths stage whisper
nervous habit
clickclickclickclickclick
no smoke break during service
love thy neighbor
why don't you?

because:
clickclickclickclick
rustle whimper sigh

hands shaking can't write

cough beep murmur chuckle

awkward greetings

smiles fake fade
you're not here.

maybe i can hear you out there--
pray in face of cold wind
hide from invasive others
keep hands still heart open

just long enough to decide

coming up soon

I finally bought my own scanner. It was about time. I wonder why I didn't think of this earlier, and spent months being intimidated by the possibility of being kicked out of Phillips Hall for trying to use their scanners. I got one that looked similar to the ones I used in Phillips, and it should arrive in a couple of days.

Here's a quick list of what I'm going to scan:

• 2 Viewmaster reels
• puzzle pieces
• greeting cards and envelopes
• tiny, thumbnail-size Ansel Adams images
• philosophy related library index cards (whole and in pieces)
• a deck of miniature playing cards
• film negatives
• Polaroids (I still have a pack of 10 left to shoot)
• a chart depicting Genesis 1:1 in computer code, courtesy of Westminster Theological Seminary

That chart of Genesis 1:1 fascinates me because it accounts for untranslatable words by using the symbol '#' as a placeholder. It reminds me of Howe's inclusion of a chart depicting various alphabets, the one I mentioned in an earlier post about a language curtain.

What is a reader's experience of encountering untranslatable words, placeholders, and gibberish? I suppose either your brain must "skip" the word, mining the whole sentence / phrase / paragraph to get a general meaning from context, or you substitute something else that makes sense to you. Maybe this is the Rorschach test of reading, where your own interpretations reveal more about you to you than about the author.

the language curtain.

Although I'm still afraid all the thoughts I have are rather obvious, I have to start somewhere.

In the section 'Scare Quotes I' Howe presents historical anecdotes, dictionary definitions, and of course quotations.

A bed hanging is a sort of curtain. An 11th century legend of a seamstress who had to discard her embroidered tapestries to evade the witch hunters (44-45) is followed shortly by a chart presenting the alphabets of different languages, which Howe presents as a "curtain" with a subtitle (47). So language is a curtain. Then she provides the definition of a curtain as " 'A cloth contracted or expanded at pleasure; To draw the curtain, to close so as to shut out the light; to open it so as to discern the objects' " (52-53).

This is a wonderful summary of how we can use language. I can't wait to throw open some curtains myself. It seems like Howe enjoys closing them, or leaving them open only a sliver.