ghosted, afflicted
I realized today that this week is the 10th book birthday of book #2, in the bird museum, and it's strange journeys into everything from victoriana to urban legends to Joseph Cornell. It came rather fast on the heels of book #1, or at least it seemed like it then. But it was very different, or felt very different somehow, both in tone and voice and style of poems. This is probably the book that was most reflective of my MFA experience--not my thesis (girl show), weirdly, which was more a finished product of my education, but this book more an examination of the process it took getting to the point of writing the thesis.
I started the program in late 2003 writing the sort of poems that appear in the early parts of the fever almanac, then the latter half in early/mid 2004. That fall, something shifted, and I usually say it started with errata--those poems borrowing from victorian genres. Of course, writing that I suspect maybe it started even a year before, my first semester, in a craft seminar with visiting writer Karen Volkman, who took us to the Art Institute and acquainted us with Cornell (I'm not sure I remember if this was the impetus for the field trip, but it was definitely what stayed with me and I started at the hotel andromeda that fall.) Later that semester, I created a hypertext project called The Dream Alphabets I stumbled across some printed out segments of--these tiny fragmented pieces that told a fractured story. So maybe it was already happening, the shift, what led to errata (created in hybrid poetics class) and then all the things that developed in the spring when I had two classes with Stephanie Strickland and the bulk of what would become feign were written.
There was quite a bit back and forth with those first two manuscripts combining and carving back apart. I thought I had two books that eventually became a single one. And then there was this other thing--these pieces that differed quite a bit from what came before. Initially, I thought the book was finished with the victorian stuff, archer avenue, the phobia pieces in the next to last section, and the feign pieces. (which was already being published as a chap by NMP.) I was close to the publication of the fever almanac in late 2006 and thought I might send the new things, then called instabilities, to Dusie, who had just begun issuing full-lengths, since I knew Susana Gardner, Dusie editor, shared my mad love of victoriana. She took it, suggested the great title change to in the bird museum, and the book swelled a little, and soon included all the Cornell poems, which I finished in early 2007 and some other random newer pieces that seemed to fit written before it was published in late 2008.
By then I had finished the program, my thesis, and was actually in a dry period when it came to writing (which I called post MFA syndrome, that strange feeling like I needed to get everyone else's fingers out of my poems). I spit out occasional pieces that would eventually go into major characters in minor films, but nothing steady. Whenever I was asked what I was writing I panicked, but it was good to have something new coming out into the world. I was doubling down on the press and the shop, having moved into the studio the previous year. I remember having a release at Quimby's right before Thanksgiving that year, but otherwise the details of my life around then are a little fuzzy but I remember very busy.
It's probably my longest book page-wise, 6 sections, the melding of 5 different distinct smaller series (feign was split into two and expanded for the full-length.) It was the first book that had distinct smaller parts and I liked it--almost like short stories in a larger collection, and I still use this model for assembling manuscripts unless it's a book-length project. Looking to see where my series projects start to constellate around certain themes and concepts and building from there. It starts with corset poem:
The body requires correction, the borders defined.
("a short history of the corset")
and ends, like the first book, with, of course, water.
you still open your seams to the world like a good little shipwreck.
("lake effect")
I've always though the voice in these poems were different from the speaker's in the fever almanac, less real women with pasts and more "paper white, present tense" ("ornithophobia") . that voice changed with subsequent books. Is still changing I imagine, though lately I've had a few more narrative leanings than lyric--(things like taurus and the slender man poems.). After it was published in 2008, there was gap in both my output and new books (girl show landed back in my lap after Ghost Road folded and then lingered a bit before Black Lawrence took it on.) After it was accepted in Sept 2011, the writing pace, related or unrelated, seemed to pick back up and the James Franco poems knocked something loose and I've been going full-tilt ever since.
Comments