Every once in a while, people (usually non creatives, non-writers, or at least non-poets). when they learn that I am a writer, inquire as to what exactly I write about. I used to just shrug my shoulders and try to explain that poets sort of use EVERYTHING as material, or more recently, I'll say I write about mermaids and james franco, but I was thinking a couple weeks ago about the subject natters of various projects either published or underway and what themes were at work in a deeper or just more cosmetic way.
rural adolescence
mothers & daughters
sex
discontented relationships
restlessness
victoriana
Joseph Cornell
transgression and danger
ghost stories / urban legends
fairy tales
suburban unrest
nature vs. "civilization"
movies, entertainment, pop culture
james franco
women as muse vs artist
sideshows & carnival women
illness
surreal landscapes
the apocalypse
atom bombs & science fiction
zombies
blonde jokes
salvadore dali
sylvia plath
marriage & domesticity
body image
1970's teenagers
drowned women
mermaids
alice in wonderland
childlessness
abandoned hotels
renaissance dog girls
creepy gothic families
love poems & politics
Some of the subjects closer to the end of the list are barely projects (the dog girl--Antoinetta Gonzalez is just research notes, for example and not yet actual poems). The Alice erasure project has been underway and stalled out for a while, and a couple things are just one or two poems into what I imagine will be a longer series...I've also been thinking about the difference of approach when it comes to compilation books and project books and how the latter seem to be driven by intent from the beginning and the former take shape during the process, but that's a blog entry for another day I suppose.
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