So tomorrow, I have declared to be my own personal Poetry Day. I plan on reading a lot of poetry, included Valzhyna Mort's Factory of Tears, starting my Anna Akhmatova biography, reading the latest 32 Poems journal. I also hope to write some poems, revise some poems. I want to re-visit my manuscript again and choose poems for my upcoming reading in Gloucester. I'm also going to start fretting over the NEA application, wherein I have to choose ten poems for a very large grant. No pressure there. Also, a few other small poetry projects, such as thinking about chapbook possibilities and other things.
I am preparing for this by doing every single piece of laundry I can find today, cleaning the house this past week so I wouldn't / couldn't use that as an excuse when the going gets tough and find an hour and a half has slipped by just while I vacuumed this one little area over here and vacuum the whole house. Yesterday, I also submitted some poems because I don't want to do that tomorrow as I tend to really dislike my poetry when I'm in that mode and it's a real slog to get it done. I don't want to feel that way about my poems tomorrow.
I am hoping that this will spark a little more enthusiasm for my poems and for doing some poetry stuff. Also, because I haven't had the time or finances to do other kinds of poetry stuff that can help kick the poetry doldrums, such as going to poetry readings and or writing conferences etc. I am making my own writing conference tomorrow, creating my own poetry reading. Wish me luck.
I finished Incarnadine, by Mary Szybist. It is beautiful. So here's a poem by her, which is gorgeous, from the Poetry Foundation.
In Tennessee I Found a Firefly
Flashing in the grass; the mouth of a spider clung
to the dark of it: the legs of the spider
held the tucked wings close,
held the abdomen still in the midst of calling
with thrusts of phosphorescent light—
When I am tired of being human, I try to remember
the two stuck together like burrs. I try to place them
central in my mind where everything else must
surround them, must see the burr and the barb of them.
There is courtship, and there is hunger. I suppose
there are grips from which even angels cannot fly.
Even imagined ones. Luciferin, luciferase.
When I am tired of only touching,
I have my mouth to try to tell you
what, in your arms, is not erased.
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