Funny, I linked to the poems below and realized how both of them have a lot to do with blue somehow. The color appears very frequently in my poems lately--I blame that great expanse of lake out my windows every day. But red occurs alot as well. And there are other things: birds, buttons, plant/flowers, skirts and dresses, insects, mothers (or an absence of mothers), ghosts, kitchens, closets, corsets, sheets/linen, the word "dark" (which I was once told by some 1st year workshop fuck to never to use because it was cliche, so of course I use it often and at length). Bathtubs, wrists, teeth, science/math terminology, oranges and peaches, metal, mouths, cake, bones, books, backseats, throats, water/drownings, dead girls, keys, sewing, burning houses, matches, parking lots, hotel rooms, clotheslines, mermaids, iron beds, tea cups, broken dishes, radios, windows, car wrecks, mythology (particularly Persephone and Philomel), tornadoes, grammar terminology. And, of course, sex.
Some of these are just things I like so it's natural they would show up (dresses, cake, bathtubs, sheets, iron beds, science terms). Or woven into the fabric of the everday (teacups, windows, buttons, books) Some of them are fears or things that freak me out, things that embedded themselves in my head at a young age (floods, fires, tornadoes, drownings, car wrecks, the thing with mothers.) Some of them just the sound of the word (parking lots, kitchen, bones, matches). All of them just good details that signify something beyond them (hotel rooms, keys, ghosts).
All these things reoccuring, the body stuff (mouth, wrists, throats.) The language vs. experience stuff thats such a large part of the fever almanac, along with weather, geography, memory. Or fein, and instabilities, with the birds reoccuring (or the fake birds, anyway) and the metallicness of corsets and bird cages. Some things from one manuscript spilling into each other. Now, archer avenue with the throat (voice,) ghosts, backseats, and dresses and oddly shoes this time. Or girl show with red cropping up everywhere and "mouth". And dulcet with more freaking birds and Philomel mythology woven through.
They're sort of the basic building blocks, though I rarely set out to have them in there, they just sort of happen. I agree it probably makes alot of my work very similar--though I'd say the upside of that is having a certain unity. But they're sort of my tools, my symbols, and hopefully I can do things different with them every time. Hopefully avoiding that terrible Sharon Olds pitfall, beating those same dead horses.
I try not to think too much about it, too much theorizing gives me a headache (when asked about my "poetics" I always want to say that I had that removed years ago.) Just write the damn poems already..
*sigh* Anyway, back to my tea and sacrificial chocolate bunny. I need to write an ode for forms class this week and am clueless as to where to start. When I was a kid, before I took French in ninth grade, I always confused "ode" with "eau de". So when my mom said someone's perfume smelled like "eau de squirrel piss" (and, yes, my mother often says things like that) I thought she was saying "ode to squirrel piss" Maybe I should use that as my title...
