Workshop

Saturday a great friend of mine celebrated the launch of her book, Canticle of Idols. You should buy it on Amazon.com right now.

I read Saturday with other poets to help push the work into the world. It was a great time. A new friend came and was able to see what I do. I was able to be who I am becoming.

Also on Saturday night I was asked to lead a workshop on Sunday. The Acentos Foundation holds these weekly workshops in east Harlem. They are free and open to the public. They have some amazing people coming through weekly. The person scheduled for Sunday canceled and I was asked to fill in. I agreed.

This meant, however, that I had to come up with a 2 hour workshop. I didn't make it home until 1:30am and needed to leave my apartment by 10:30a to make it to the east side by bus with a few minutes to prepare. Lucky for me, I bought this book on a whim. It's called "One year to a writing life". Granted, it doesn't have the kind of words I need at this juncture in my career, it did, however, have snippets here and there that I could splice and mix into a workshop.

I couldn't decided between Odes or Prose Poems. I printed out poems for both. But I decided to go with a workshop on Odes. I wrote down my plan on the bus over there, and said a little prayer that it would go over well, and my! The poems produced in those 2 hours were amazing. I was so happy to be a midwife to these babies.

I came home and decided I need to start building more. My empire. I typed up the plan. I will probably type up other plans.

I am also thinking about other ways (like last post) to create my writing footprint on the world. This includes taking a big leap from a former teacher who said that poets can't just be poets in this day. While preparing to send off grad school applications, I have been writing some prose - in addition to the book reviews - and hope to find homes for this new body of work as well.

Book Reviews

I am learning that the best way to make a poetic footprint in the world is not only through publishing poetry. Well, I knew that a while ago. A mentor said so. But you refuse to acknowledge that poetry cannot feed you. You're like: fiction writers get paid to just write fiction. Then you just sound like a whiny writer who is unhappy with your lot. Maybe I am. Maybe I want the world to be like it was in the old days. When poetry mattered. Not to say poetry doesn't matter. It does. Of course it does. But what I mean is, when people could live off of their poetry. When people were sponsored by the state and governments and monarchies and officials to write poetry...for the people.

Anyways. It's not like writing book reviews is a chore. Well, it can be. Some places want you to be "objective" -- meaning, they want you to find something bad about a poetry book to say. I don't know that I think that is fair...a mentor of mine who writes several poetry books a month says he only writes book reviews for books he likes. Which is fair -- why would you intentionally put bad vibes out into the world? Especially if you are a poet yourself and someone may or will have the opportunity to review your book. Isn't the purpose of book reviews to say: hey, this book is out there...here's my take on it...see for yourself? That's what I believe they are for. They are exposure for the book/author being reviewed, and maybe even the reviewer.

Maybe it's like karma: I review your book and you review mine?

Anyways. I am writing this review....I hope to finish it tomorrow. It only needs to be about 500 words. I have a magazine ready and waiting. Which is, too, exciting.

Onward --

sieve

i love that word. i don't know why. it sounds almost like it's job.

today, i'm going to go through my poems with a dear, dear friend of mine and figure out which ones i am using to apply to graduate school(s). I need to narrow down about 40ish poems to 10. crazy, huh? that's why you ask a friend to help you.

i am currently re-reading ross gay's _against which_ and honoree fannone jeffer's _red clay suite_. it is here i am learning about rethinking the narratives and stories we tell in our poetry books. i am preparing _cartographer_ to send out again nearing the end or middle of december.

my looming loneliness has served as a sieve to figure out what people i really need in my life. it has been a hard process, filtering. but necessary. some people in your life actually do you harm, i'm learning. even if their intentions seem good. what may feel or what you may think feels good is actually stripping you away, down to nothing, down to the exposed nerve. some people are like candy to teeth. you're happy and happy until you have to get a root canal, and you'd wished you hadn't eaten so much in the first place -- but the damage is too deep, too far gone to take any of it back.

*sneeze #3 in the last hour*

i'm looking forward, i think, to some time away from this schedule i keep. some friends are coming into town for thanksgiving...and we're going to my friend's sister's house to eat and drink and be merry. hopefully things are fine. i believe they will be. but i miss my family. i miss cooking half of the thanksgiving meal myself. i miss eating and sleeping and getting up to eat again.

next thanksgiving i'm not spending it away.

'tis the season

Winter is a beast. It's not even winter yet. But it, already is a beast.

I'm a little homesick, I'm not going to lie. I've never really been this homesick before. A friend said he never experienced homesickness. I guess I could say that before now. Maybe it is the winter. Maybe it is I do not get enough vitamin D, or essential sun rays on my face and shoulders, because they're bundled up in layers upon layers of clothing.

I haven't really had a reason to get dressed up and go out. I've been a loser and staying inside. Granted, I get sucked into going out after work or a poetry reading, but I've not had a date or a real time set out to go and explore, to live, to just enjoy life and being alive. The cold does not facilitate this, either, as I just want to stay in my bed, in my room. Inside.

On the writing side of things, who are you reading? I realize this is a question I've come to hate. I'm always "reading" someone or something, but I dont really know what this means when folks ask it. Generally, this comes on the heels of me saying something like, "Yeh, I just put together another manuscript" or "yeh, I just did a poetry challenge." or something. I don't know. Do they want to know who is influencing my work?

I came to the conclusion that I read more fiction when I'm working on poetry. I read poetry to pass time on the train. (truth told) I read poetry when I am working on a specific poem and I remembered a poem I read in passing or a poet that I could look at to get my gears turning. But, truthfully, outside of Mahmoud Darwish....who I haven't read in a while, and I haven't even read the one book I have all the way through...is probably my knee-jerk answer, because people look for an answer a name, a book. As if they expect you to have an answer. I don't ever have an answer, but I say Darwish to appease them, to move the conversation along.

Is that bad of me to say? That I don't really read? That I expect people to read, but that I don't read. That's the wrong way of saying what I'm trying to say. I read. I could have a full on conversation about the last books of poetry I've read. I could give you my opinions and such. But it's hard for me to say "I'm reading x" when really what it seems they want is a favorite poet, which I do not or cannot say with assurance that I have. A favorite poet. And this puts me a crazy position. Because I know there may come a time when I will be interviewed or asked questions or people want to know the origins of my genius. And I guess, what I'm saying is that my foundation is not from reading. My foundation is from talking to people. To engaging. To writing and writing and writing. It is in the communities and conversations I build. It is in thinking about history and how to tell history in a poem. It is watching the world outside.

It does not come from a book.

Tuesday

I'm trying to be a better blogging citizen. I mean, I have people's blogs that I check everyday. Yet I do not update my life enough on this thing. Although, I must admit, it becomes challenging telling the same store several times over. I write most of my life in my journals/moleskins.

Today ends my November week-long poetry challenge. This has been a good one. I believe I love every poem I wrote, although several now I cannot remember.

Let's refresh. Here's the titles, at least, of the poems written this week. Everything is about Harlem.

Wednesday: M101L Uptown Bus
Thursday: P.S. 153 Auditorium
Friday: Bird Song
Saturday: 120th and Morningside
Sunday: Cerebral
Monday: 132nd and Adam Clayton Powell
Tuesday: Saturdays, 125th Street

The last two pieces are in form. Monday's poem is a Pantoum, as said. Today's poem I came and sat down at a cafe with a nice cup of coffee and pounded out a hefty sestina. It's probably one that I'm most proud of, and well, I've written a lot of sestinas. It is my #2 favorite form.

I believe I hit a momentum. I believe the momentum came when I finally let the project be a project instead of a bunch of poems in a folder. So. I think I'm going to try one more week. Or just continue as long as this lasts...as long as I have something. Although, I do believe that my turn to form is saying I am beginning to lose things to talk about. Weird conclusion, for some, I know. But I tend to turn to form when I have a poem I don't know how to shape or get out (my pantoum is about a homeless man & a severed 5$ bill on the ground at his feet)....or when I have a half-realized idea....I sit down at the table with it like a sudoku puzzle and move some things around and turn it and twist it until it fits into a poem. I think that's how my sestina arrived.

I might try a few more forms both to give some "weight" -- as form seems to do that for poetry books -- and because I feel like there are still some things that if I'm writing about Harlem I need to address.

What kind of things would you like to see about Harlem?

Monday update:

So I've got great news. Be sure I'll tell you all this in a few months, but I'd like to begin to put the energy into the world right now.

May 10, 2009 will be the night of my NYC Book Party/Launch. Yep. At The Bowery Poetry Club. Yep. from 6-930pm.

Other than that, business as usual. The economy being what it is required me to take some time (really, they "fixed" my schedule) off at work, and at first I was totally upset. I was livid. However, I will still make decent enough money to tide me over. I should be thankful, I concluded. For the time. I have this new manuscript that needs to be nurtured. I have a novel that I would like to see finished before the end of the year. I should be thankful that I have these few more hours, these few more days, really, a week to devote to writing. Here, I am trying to channel the positive.

I ordered two books last week. Toni Morrison's _a mercy_ and Jericho Brown's (Hi, Jericho!) _please_. They arrived yesterday. Whenever I work in the Bronx, I have a 45 minute commute from my apartment in Harlem there, and then an hour from the Bronx to my job's office on Wall Street. While I have this "policy" of three takes for music and poetry collections before I come down hard and fast, Jericho's book decidedly kept me engaged the whole ride. Let me just say, "Track 1: Lush Life". And I'm not just saying it because it's the first poem of the book. I mean, there are other poems -- but I remember reading that poem (sometimes I read collections back to front...) and immediately looking forward to the next 40 minute commute.

Last night I did get to see Toni Morrison. For like 2 seconds. Maybe my devotion is not that deep. My best friend called me earlier in the day to say she was in Barnes and Noble and Toni Morrison was giving a reading and immediately thought about me. I didn't know. But I thought how sweet, I just picked up the book today. It's in my bag. Perfect. I had just promised a friend I would go hear him feature. I cursed myself. So, I tried to slip away and gave myself excuses for going to see Toni Morrison at Barnes & Noble. When I got there, I thought, the bookstore was pretty empty to be having Toni there. I forgot about the four floors, and took myself to the top. Before the last escalator, a woman stopped me to ensure the4th floor was my destination.

"You're here for the event?" Yes, I say. Thinking she was going to tell me I needed a ticket or something I didn't have because I had just gotten off the train from work.

"There's like 1000 people up there and it's hot as heck. You have to go up and all the way to the back," she says.

I shrug it off, thinking, what's so bad about sitting on the back row or something. I go up there and it is packed. The air has stopped moving. And there is a low murmur from the front of the room that barely makes it past the rows and rows - and indeed, bookshelves - of people on the fourth floor. I strained to hear her from across the room and between the stacks. I was sweating, and suffocating (in truth: I'm slightly claustrophobic) and after about 2 minutes I got out of there. I love Toni, but the reality of me getting my book signed or surviving that reading was not happening. So, I left and went to Bar 13.

There, I wrote a pantoum. My favorite form. About Harlem, my favorite place.

Make your own luck!

I don't know or remember where I've heard that quote. But I just thought about it. I suppose it's the moral, or at least similar to the idea that if the world gives you lemons, make lemonade.

This week has been a hell of a week. I will not relive it here. Just know, that I've been pissy and moody.

However, I decided to channel that energy into something productive. I decided to stop saying "I have enough poems for another manuscript" and actually produce it.

Tonight, I put together another manuscript.

A couple days ago, I assembled a chapbook.

Monday, I have to send it off, for a deadline, for the Crab Orchard Open Series. Within the next month, I need to send it to Tupelo for the Dorsett Prize.

Tis the season for sowing. Next season, reaping.