I've spent a good part of the last two Sundays working on tweaking the layout for in the bird museum--a slow task since I'm such a spaz with InDesign. I'm having a weird relationship with all my work lately--there are just so many poems. bird museum, of course, feels so hugely different from the fever almanac, both in subject matter and style. girl show feels like a melding of the two somehow, but the newest stuff feels like a paring down in terms of flourish, but definitely feels more urgent. Also more personal somehow, and therefore more uncomfortable. I'm less likely to let people I know see these poems, less likely to let anyone but editors see them so far. And even then very few. I've read some of it at readings, though, and response has been good. I've decided to let things simmer for awhile before I start sending much of it out. And yet they seem easier to write but harder to claim. I'm not so much driven by narrative as in the first book, the politics of the second, the setting/mood of the third. I'm not sure what drives these poems, but it is definitely more my own experience, and in some cases, things that are happening NOW as opposed to things that have a certain amount of psychic distance. So maybe that's why they make me slightly uncomfortable. And yet I remember conversations with Arielle G last year in terms of my newer work that maybe, just maybe predicted just this sort of thing.
Of course then I fear that what feels so different to me is just the same old dog in a different dress to others...
