YOU WRITE AS IF YOU DON'T KNOW THE MEANING OF A SINGLE WORD[!]*

notebook sketches:

1: i've been reading quite a bit of dean young...well, everyone around me's been reading quite a bit of dean young.  there's a whole lot to like about a poet who, when you ask him to sign your book, pulls out a complete set of crayola crayons before asking your name (i feel like that might also be a decent description of his poetry?).  anyway, beside the whole constellation of his lines i have running through my notebook, i've also noticed that he has an image he returns to, book after book -- that of walking into his bedroom to find his friends' girlfriend waiting, wearing just dean young's 'one nice white shirt'.  i mean, it's great.  even more great: he comes back to it, this image, again and again, treating it with a kind of wry amazement.  i'm totally all about achieving that neurotic awe, and i can completely understand his reasons for using it repeatedly --

which makes me wonder about any specific images that other poets you've read return to repeatedly? or those in your own writing? and not just words, something more concrete than that. i tend to talk about hands, broken hands, hands making & unmaking things -- and i haven't really figured out exactly how to wring everything i want out of that image just yet. which is maybe why i keep using it? it's so not right yet. which is not to say that's the case with dean young. we all have our reasons for our only good white shirts.

2: ok, more vague now: does it expend more energy to order or disorder a world? all the incoherent, incohesive elements of your life -- do you create a system of them or catalog the way they pacify & rage?

3: also, is it a good or a bad thing when your parents don't understand your poetry anymore? a year ago (still writing narratively), i would've said bad, decisively.  (nb: & when i wrote that down, i was certain that the opposite was true. and now i'm back again.) this is assuming of course that your parents are not, say, yeats & ruefle, that your parents sell hats and work at healthcare companies. wait, what? me?

4: (i keep meaning to write less neurotic blog entries, but i feel like this one is reaching a whole new low.  i'm trying: i haven't reverted to caps lock yet.)

5: i'm writing a critical piece on berryman & the post-modern elegy, & so i've been married, recently, to the mariani biography.  which is knee-breaking, and stupidly quotable.  to paraphrase mariani paraphrasing berryman (literary telephone!): 'better to forget the meaning & luxuriate in the writing -- don't be stiff, better to riot, and with good conscience.'

6: bought a desk for 15 bucks today. for a magic hat variety show, my friend's helping me lug it down from burlington this monday. and then hopefully i'll turn some of this nonsense into, well, other nonsense, linebroken nonsense.  that's my excuse, anyway, my lack of a desk.  this couch's only functions are apparently blogging and watching rome. which is fine with me, for now, but that means you'll probably get more 'brain dumping' (jesus) in the next few days. sorry guys.

*dean young!