changing the changes

this post's title is after Hermine Pinson's CD title. It is also sort of acknowledging another shift, another change, and how, I suppose, the body feels these shifts when it has a time to be still and listen, like when you're up on a mountain top. like now.

Yesterday was wildly productive. Yesterday I sat with some jazz songs and meditated. I have this thing I like to do with jazz songs -- especially ones that either I don't know the words to or that just don't have words to them -- where I imagine the lyrics. So, my friend has a CD out. He has this song that might be one of my favorites...because of this solo that he has that, to me, has so much heart, so much open heart. I play the song over and over, and imagine the words, and in the context of relationships (perhaps ours) I imagine him saying "I'm sorry. I'm so very sorry. I'm so sorry that I hurt you" and it fits. My lyrics, to his playing. So I wondered what a poem written with this feel, this mood would feel like. So I started freewriting. With the song on repeat I freewrote for a couple of minutes. Then I used that material to lift out phrases to build a poem with later. I did this for 6 songs. I got sing poems..each I feel captured the feel of the song.

What was on the playlist you ask? (I'm leaving said friend out of this...so only 5 songs)

Maiden Voyage/Everything in its place -- Robert Glasper
Perazuan -- Esperanza Spalding
Thinking one thing and doing another -- Miles Davis
Days of Wine and Roses --
August Blues --

I forget right now who did the last two ones. Updates later. But it's a nice exercise. If you try it, let me know how it turns out!

I have also been doing some crazy, crazy reading up here. Marilyn Nelson has a biggg library. All you can eat. Plus more. So, I go to the shelves and pick books for the day and then read them. I have this project I started (e-mail me if you want an invite) where I decided to gather some cool poet-lovers and suggested we share our favorite poems, or poems that make us say "Damn" or just poems that we think need to be out in the world. So an online poetry anthology, if you will. "Unthemed" except to say we thought we liked them enough that we wanted to share them with each other. This has brougt up some interesting conversations and interesting moments of, "oh, I've never heard of this poet" or "oh! I like this poem, too!"...surely there can be some misjudgment and people may say "this did not make me say 'damn'" and that's fine too -- this space is just a collection of poems to make us think, because I want to be well-read, but I don't always know what to dip into. I have some new names to check out, recommended by some really great poets. Come join the fun.

What else? Today I only wrote one poem. Which is like....way below record. But I did finish my play, so I'll take that. I also woke up late thanks to this wonderful rain. It happened so, that I thought it was a dream. I woke up to the sound of rain and thought, "I should pull down the window, maybe turn off the fan" and then went right back to sleep. Rain will do that. By the time I actually got up and decided to get on with my day, the sun was out, the deck was dry -- there was no evidence of this rain that kept me in the bed longer. So my schedule was off. So I just read some, and played with the play (my first ever. although i don't think anything will become of it, i can just say that i've written a play now...which i couldn't say before here)...and listened to stories. I cooked dinner for everyone. Then we sat around and had a "reading" -- Hermine and Karma and Marilyn and myself. We all read things we were working on at the moment. I read some of my animal poems, mainly animals inspired by the environment...ones I had actually seen from my room window (badger/woodchuck, small-mouthed bass, io moth, turkey vulture, spider). Then I read some of the poems from the jazz stuff, some other non-related poems (when I broke off from doin the animal poems, I decided to use Neruda's questions to mull over for a bit and maybe inspire a poem in response to the question)....then, I got to read some of my novel with them. They seemed to enjoy it. There were some questions, which is understandable; I still don't have some things planned out yet, nor have I really sat down and said, "I'm going to begin editing," but it was good to get some writerly ears listening, in conversation.

6 days left. I suppose after the week-remaining mark you start counting down? Instead of saying Day 14, I opted to say, "six days left" -- and I can't decide if it is equivalent to the "glass half-empty" or what. Just this fact: there are six days left here. Who knows what or who will come or visit in those days.

day 12

There is something to be said about this experience, the first time around. I have never done a residency like this before. I've done three years of Cave Canem now, three summers, rather, three weeks. Essentially my time here at Soul Mountain is the sum of my time at Cave Canem, except the time passes differently here. It is a different experience, a lonely existence.

Maybe it is I am reverting to what brought me to writing in the first place, loneliness. And maybe it is I am afraid of that space, having felt that I successfully left it for this life of constant people around me, of constant love. I always say of Cave Canem that it is my big family that I always wanted. There is/has been always someone around me from that family..or someone I am trying to get into this family.

There are Cave Canem family members here, but it is different. We are not required/expected to interact with each other. So this voyage is one done alone. As with most things I embark on, I am noticing, I begin a thing with such exuberance, such momentum, such excitement, that I am unaware of the impending danger. I don't see the caution signs or the beware, rocky roads ahead sign. I just keep driving with the wind in my face, the sun on my shoulder, my arm out the window. And then the gas light comes on. And then the wilderness and all I've got with me is a pack of cigarettes and a half-empty bottle of water...and no cars for hours or miles.

It's day 12. I have 8 more days to go. I have reached a wilderness of sorts. Maybe it is because energy has shifted in the house? One of the residents left yesterday, so today was a new day in this same place. It was different. I woke up with a headache that I couldn't explain. I woke up, ate breakfast, finished this book I was reading, and went back to sleep until lunch time. I woke up from lunch time and sat around with a couple of books and beginnings of poems that have yet to formalize into actual poems. All except for one. One about the body. I have tricked myself into thinking/believing the one about solitude is a poem, but it's not, really. I pretend it is. Right now, I have written 32 poems in 12 days. I guess there is a breaking point for the body/mind? Maybe I have reached it. Then, what to do for these last 8 days? Maybe this is opening a space for the novel. Maybe. We'll see what words come to me tomorrow.

More Questions (thanks to Neruda)

from Neruda's "The Book of Questions"

-Tell me, is the rose naked/ or is that her only dress?
-Is there anything in the world sadder/ than a train standing in the rain?
-For whom do the pistils of the sun burn/ in the shadow of the eclipse?
-Is the sun the same as yesterday's/ or is this fire different from that fire?
-Who shouted with glee/ when the color blue was born?
-How did the abandoned bicycle win its freedom?
-Is it bad to live without a Hell:/ aren't we able to reconstruct it?
-Where is the center of the sea?/ Why do waves never go there?
-Yesterday, yesterday I asked my eyes/ when will we see each other again?
-Why did the grove undress itself/ only to wait for the snow?
-And why is the sun such a bad companion/ to the traveler in the desert?
-Was it where they lost me/ that I finally found myself?
-Does he who is always waiting suffer more/ than he who's never waited for anyone?
-Perhaps heaven will be/ for suicides, an invisible star?
-Where is the child i was,/ still inside me or gone?
-Why did we both not die/ when my childhood died?
-Did autumn's hairdressers/ uncomb these chrysanthemums?
-Why do the waves ask me/the same questions i ask them?
-And why do they strike the rock/ with so much wasted passion?
-Don't they get tired of repeating their declaration to the sand?

neruda's questions

i pulled these questions out....

- "am i allowed to ask my book/ whether it's true i wrote it?"
-"is it because i must die/ or because it must die?"
-"do you have room for some thorns?/ they asked the rosebush."
="Whom does the magnolia fool/ with its fragrance of lemons?"
-"why do assemblies of umbrellas/ always occur in London?"
-"why does it not dawn in Bolivia/ after the night of Guevara?"
-"and does his assassinated heart/ search there for his assassins?"
-"will our life not be a tunnel/ between two vague clarities?"
-"What did the tree learn from the earth/ to be able to talk with the sky?"
-"who was she who made to love you/ in your dream, while you slept?"
-"did spring never deceive you/ with kisses that didn't blossom?"
-"what does it mean to persist/ on the alley of death?"
-"at dawn, which smooth syllables/ does the ocean air repel?"
-"with which stars do they go on speaking/ the rivers that never reach the sea?"
-"How do the seasons know/ they must change their skirts?"

LXVII
Can you love me, syllabary,
and give me a meaningful kiss?

Is a dictionary a sepulchre
or a sealed honeycomb?

In which window did i remain
watching buried time?

Or is what i see from afar
what I have not yet lived?

Day 8

So I've been at Soul Mountain now for 8 days. It is easy to count my time here as it passes the way the month of July passes...slow nectar with each rise and fall of the sun.

There is much to be thankful for, this I know. This time, though often I find myself bored and lonely, is something to be thankful for. I am. I was in a rut for a little bit, looking for things to write about, and even still now I find myself looking for the next poem, but know that something magical happens when you allow yourself to stop life for a moment and really just give yourself to your art, your craft. Exposure like this can be daunting. It has been for me, learning things about myself that I was not sure I was ready to deal with. But, I survive.

Over the past few days I've started and finished Claudia Rankine's _Don't Let Me Be Lonely_ and I will say right now, I believe in its brilliance. I want to say I wish I had the capacity to write something equally brilliant. I cannot say that before my week at Cave Canem with her that I would have picked up this book and attempted to read it; in fact, I had the book for a while before I read it. Being on a mountain top affords you a lot of time to read things you never thought you'd give yourself to reading before. Anyways. Read it. Let's talk about it.

Also while here I embarked on a larger project which included investigating animals. It isn't as Discovery Channel as it sounds, but it is a collection of poems in which the titles are different animal species and I have moved on to investigating different landscapes. Of course, they have a specific De'Lana turn. What would a poem written by me be like without it?

What else is there? I started and finished a short story between yesterday and today. I started a play and an essay. I have the desire to write a long poem and I think I have the idea for it. I will spend tonight mapping it out. It will be my endurance test. I think my poems are indicative of my mild ADD. They are short. They rarely - unless a sestina which the form forces its length - go beyond the second page. To think that I could find an idea that could sustain more than say...50 lines, is amazing. and I'm going to try it. I'm going to try and write something or start something while here that is going to be the longest poem I've ever written. What that will do for me, I'm not sure, other than break past this imaginary wall that seems to draw itself about halfway down the page and dares my pen to cross it, and I usually don't. But I'm on a mission to cross that frontier, and to do it with a stunning poem. Watch out now.

notes from Soul Mountain

-I wish I had something profound to say here.
-Today is day 5/20. I have written about 11 animals since I've gotten here.
-I started a play about two artists trying to make life and family work while staying committed/true to their art.
-I started an essay about my ability to re-create my own personal history because of my inability to access my actual personal history and what freedoms or burdens that affords me.
-I've watched fish jump out of the pond that is right outside my window, and written about it.
-an unfinished joke: Why did the turkey cross the lawn? or the woodchuck?
-I've been chased out of the woods by territorial bees.
-I've had the desire to want to write something profound.
-I had dreams about people I never expected to dream about...and those dreams have happened multiple times.

-I've called people despite my day of silence, because the silence was too much.

from Soul Mountain

fish jumping from the pond -
high noon. the writer waits
for the word

7/3/2008