It's that kind of heat that borders on oppressive, as June does sometimes, but I am plugging away steadily this week so far on some new love poems and have even sent a couple off in the submission hinterlands. A couple weeks ago, I finally compiled the disparate pieces of my most recent manuscript project into one document and it's already cresting at 70 pages, and there are still a few more poems to be written. I'd like to maybe finish it by the end of the year and before little apocalypse makes its debut next year.
I've been thinking about book manuscripts in general and how they work--different approaches with my own books, ie the project vs.compilation books. the fever almanac was definitely a compilation of singular poems that was then divided up into sections accordingly. in the bird museum was a compliation of several small projects, as were major characters in minor films and salvage. (as well as the upcoming book.) girl show and the shared properties of water and stars, however, were more tightly woven projects from the beginning.
Those projects books are always somehow harder to bring into being, to stick with for the long haul and not lose some sort of momentum. Usually the smaller projects sort of constellate around similar ideas or themes or feels and suddenly you have a book on your hands. I have two such compilation manuscripts in the works now, the one I mentioned earlier, currently titled rough weather, and the half-completed animal, vegetable, monster book. There is also the hotel poems--a project book--that is sadly much neglected of late but I have hope to turn some attention to it later this year. Also, the planned expansion of the beautiful sinister poems into a longer project I'd like to do. (I've been feeling that, as a chap, it's woefully unfinished and there is so much more there in the story.)
