road maps and rogue projects
I think we all want to feel connected to other writers, to the invisible lines between their work and our own. At times I've felt this more than others, but also, at the same time, I always felt a little out of place. It may have been circumstantial--more a testament to factors that had absolutely nothing to do with the work itself. But probably moreso that I've always been more narrative in focus than lyric. In fact, would shift uncomfortably in my seat in classes where the narrative was villified, maybe legitimately since a lot of narrative work falls short in its attention to language that the lyric indulges and rolls around in rather lasciviously. It was often unfashionable, especially in more avant-garde and experimental crowds. Clunky and outdated.
But its always been one of the chief draws. Especially for a poet who only rarely writes about her own experiences, and less and less as time goes on. The current series I am working on is about bird girls and swamp communities. The last? Greek myths about girls transformed into deer. Before that? Sci fi-ish poems about robot girls. While I am very much present in these poems, and sometimes even weave more personal details in the web of them..they are by and large not me and my experiences. I've always felt like this makes me more a fiction writer who happens to use poetry as my weapon of choice than a poet.
Looking back over previous collections of work, this becomes more obvious, since outside of some standalone projects like GIRL SHOW or GRANATA, most books I've published wrap several series in the same wrapper build along some common themes. Sometimes it takes a book a while to have all its parts. Other times, it happens fast (COLLAPSOLOGIES was one of these, mostly written during and about the pandemic either directly or indirectly.) WILD(ISH) works in a similar way, with the bulk of it written between 2023 and 2025. I have a few loose groupings now that will one day be books most likely if I can get to finishing them. But these books also make me feel unfashionable and conspicuous sometimes and in certain conversations.
Lately, when starting a new project, whatever form its taking, I think about it as a story. Maybe askew, maybe fragmented in final form, but still a narrative through line that helps with the writing of it. It is more a loose outline than a tight one, which allows me to develop the narrative as I work, to veer toward some things and away from others. To shape and reshape things if necessary. This has helped projects of late feel cleaner and less unruly, and helped in many cases those first few fledgling drafts that are the hardest parts to dig in. It also helps with knowing the end, the stopping point I also have trouble with, where I can never be sure if a project is really finished.
Not that I always know where I'm going, or even what I am doing, but it helps to have a map, or at the very least, a list of destinations to adjust or scrap or find the best route to....I say this knowing full well that many of my best projects actually had no road map, or that the map was abandoned for the better. I think about the series of love poems I wrote to J, how over the months, they became more about relationships between men and women in general and less about us. Or even the James Franco poems that started as a joke between me and co-workers and actually became a pretty nice meditation on poetry and celebrity (or maybe more accurately anti-celebrity.) I do occasionally surprise myself. When I started writing Overlook I was just trying to pay homage to "The Shining," but doing so in the middle of the pandemic and a labor/economic crises made it an entirely different project than had I written it five years prior.
These are the happy accidents I suppose, so as important as it is to have a map, is the ability to let go of it when needed....
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