Monthly Archives: August 2009

A bad poem for a bad and good situation

Being a pack rat
Can be good
And bad
In the same moment
Apparently.

Having discovered a leak in the basement
Drowning
My ancient cassette tapes
Music now swimming in a pool of water
(thankfully clean)

Then finding I had saved
Two years’ worth of old phone books
Including the one with the plumber’s mobile phone number
Handwritten in the margin

Once again, a reminder:
Poetry is everywhere.

Lately, I’ve been reading other writers’ unpublished work, and also editing my new novel. As I whittle sentences down to a size and rhythm that’s tighter and more manageable, I keep thinking of this process as a sort of good corseting. I wish I could show my dear readers what I mean by demonstrating, but it’s as if I’m cutting excess stuff, and yanking the corset tighter. Again and again, in different ways and different places. Cut, yank, cut, yank, and so on. I’m recalling those preppy camp belts people used to wear with chinos in the 1980s, with webbing and metal buckles that you fold down, like seat belts. But with those belts, there was much more pulling involved.

Something like this.

So everything looks better, and feels better, as long as one is not a sentence.