Saturday afternoon musings

It's raining another day in New York City. I am a bit upset. I need sun, people!

So I've been thinking a lot about poetry lately. I suppose it's because I'm not really writing poetry, so I'm thinking about it at least, believing that I'm still being productive. What am I thinking? I'm thinking about several conversations I've had with other writers...most who are where I am, with one book out and another in-tow...and trying to figure out this world of book publishing in a world (the US, really.....why can't we be in the forefront here?) that could care less, really. But anyways, on more than one occasion have I heard someone say they were trying not to write the same book twice. One writer even went so far as to say he was holding his manuscript from publication because he doesn't feel he's been changed enough by it, or that it is different enough. I've been fighting with this. I have one full manuscript, and one that I believe is almost done, and they were all written in and around each other. In truth, some poems that appear in How God Ends Us could very well be poems that could work in this other manuscript. So, what does that say? That my writing hasn't changed enough? That I am writing the same book?

So then I'm thinking about the positives and negatives about this idea....I think a look at music could give us bigger ideas as to why this approach (changing our poetry game each book) could hurt or help us. Erykah Badu could be a good example. She came out with two albums that were similar in feel -- Baduizm and Mama's Gun. Though, without a doubt, in Mama's Gun, she had hints at a change, at something coming -- take the opening cut "Penitentiary Philosophy"....hard core jamming on the drums -- several levels up from "Rimshot", right?

But she still had some of that familiar. Some of that slow groove that everyone liked. Quite possibly my favorite song of hers, Green Eyes contains a lot of everything -- more bass & kick, slow and mellow....great vocals. Something for everyone.

She came out with World Wide Underground and folks were grumbling and mad and about ready to kick her to the curb. Folks bought it out of faithfulness, but I know many folks who don't know the album as they could talk about her live album or any of the other two. It was definitely a change, something different. She definitely didn't "record the same album" again. But at what cost? Folks just coming to her at this album would be taking a risk. Do they love it? Do they want to go back through her discography and see what else she does? If they love it and go back and want to hear more of it, they would be disappointed to find that because she changed her game so, she is not the same artist they fell in love with. Folks coming to this album from the start with E. Badu and with support for her growth would maybe understand that it is a door opening, that maybe, just maybe, whatever comes after this would be a nice balance. She was just going through musical puberty....

So then you get New Amerikah. And I think without songs like "Telephone" -- it would still be unbalanced...very much like a "better" World Wide Underground with heavy background stuff and not as much of Badu's vocals. She found her balance. A balance I think could only have happened because she remembered this past musician she was and gave herself room for this new musician she wants to be. I think if folks come to E. Badu with this as their first album and go back through her discography, they would not be alienated.

Back to poetry and writing and books, now. I am thinking about poets like Lucille Clifton. I am thinking about older poets, poets that we love, poets that we use to build canons and create syllabi for writing courses and literature courses and write whole theses about the arc of their work charting from beginning to end. I think the love of Ms. Clifton's work comes from this unchanging simplicity in her language and poetics...the constant that stays from book to book. Would we still love ms. Clifton as Ms. Clifton if she changed her game up every book? Would we still have the same feelings for her as we went from book to book, looking for those short, imaginative narratives, if she, say, were to switch it up and become a language poet? Would she still be Ms. Lucille Clifton? In name, yes. But maybe that's all.

Not to say something is wrong with becoming a language poet. I'm not going down that road. I've been reading some interesting poets as of late, trying to stretch (read: not change) my own strict-narrative bend. Matthea Harvey's Modern Life has been an interesting read, and only because I am coming to it with this open-mindedness about really trying to figure out what she's doing has it spoken to me in a most real and quiet way.

So there is this tug between wanting to do something different. I feel like I've told most of the stories I have to tell in my life, and find myself writing some of the same things in different ways. That is something I do not want to get locked into...There are some poets who tell the same story from collection to collection. That I am trying to avoid. But why re-invent myself each time I come to the gathering table for a collection or manuscript? What will I prove?

Any thoughts?