feed

Despite mostly shuttling back and forth between the warmth of my bed and the space heater near my desk, I spent some time this past weekend with what will likely be book #9. There are a couple mss in similar stages of completion but the other needs far more editing and work than this on, which is therefore a little closer to being a real, actual thing.  This one FEED, is the one about mothers and daughters and disordered eating. It includes the newly finished swallow series, the Hansel & Gretel poems, and the imaginary daughter pieces.  What still feels to need some work is the hunger palace, the third section, which still makes me feel way too self-conscious. 

It's more lyric-essayistic and less prose poem-y, but it forms somewhat the heart of the book.  Maybe because it's personal.  Maybe because I feel too close to it or not close enough.  Maybe because it's more serious and less "poetic" than the other section of the book.  I don't trust it. I have a harder time trusting myself on how good or bad it is. Or even if it makes sense at all.

This was my first read through on the whole gathered manuscript together and I wound up swapping a couple sections--I initially thought to end it with the hunger palace, but I think the imaginary daughter pieces are better and a little more reflective of the book as a whole.  That means the book as a whole  begins with the spider that ate the fly in the swallow poems and the boxes full of museum specimens in that last poem. Which feels appropriate.  Also the fairy tale-is plump pieces follow swallow nicely, since the latter border on the surreal at points. Luckily, I hashed out the order in each individual section when I was composing those, so there won't be much re-organizing in each section happening.

I think once I nail down the hunger palace and do a final polishing, the book will be ready to start sending out this summer. Summer seems like a really far away thing right now, but I am counting down the days...