fluids

 i'm still figuring it all out, you see. nothing, it feels, has quite crystalized, maybe? i suspect it may take a little time and a lot of editing before we really reach certainty. of course, the poems generally take time; sometimes a lot, sometimes less.

 

but there's also the issue of style and voice. style is fiddly but easier, maybe; voice takes a lot of time, maybe. i know i don't like capital letters (what's their use? what do they add?). i'm a question mark on punctuation (the metro/national guard poem ended up with no punctuation, as an experiment i suppose, but it's hurting me to leave it that way, to not add it all back; in paranoia: brunch and others, i'm so precise and careful about punctuation..). i'm also testing 2-dot ellipses (they prevent autocorrect from reformatting them as soon as i hit that third period..) but also spaced out ellipses (. . .) for the same reason plus greater drama. . . and numerals, yes, using only numerals for numbers feels right (why spell them out? it only eats up space!). i also like courier new (my fave font in middle school; who doesn't love a typewriter?), but its em dash is so short. just look at this "—"; i have to double it up to get the right effect——which looks weird in practically every other typeface! it also doesn't italicize well, in my opinion, plus typewriters used underlines for that anyway..

 but voice.. what is voice, generally? what's mine? am i sarcastic, am i earnest? am i cynical, am i disillusioned? am i speaking for myself, my demographic, my generation? am i loud, am i quiet? am i big, am i small? am i aggressive and explicit or soft and understated? 

 who the fuck am i?

 maybe i just need to read more. it's alarming how little poetry i feel i've consumed compared with my ambitions for writing it; i want to write everything all the time, but i feel like i've genuinely read only a half dozen poets. maybe a bit more, maybe a bit less, hard to say. (my memory is trash, after all.) bishop, eliot, whitman, stevens, frost, donne, shakespeare (a gimme). . . others too i hope. someone not white, maybe?? damn the canon and collegiate curricula. . . but anyway, reading is hard and i'm far, far behind. reading about poetry has helped, too; mary oliver (whose poetry i'm currently reading; add her to the list, white as i think she is. . .) has that poetry handbook, which i felt could have gone a bit deeper but still helped give me more greatly attuned, finessed, solid fingers with which to sift & feel my way thru poetry, both my own (thanks) and others'.

 the commonplace book may also help. yes, i've blasted social my media about it, and i've raved about it to friends, but i've started a commonplace book; it's been a fun experiment so far. let's hope it sticks——i'd certainly like it to. i'm enjoying it regardless where it leads. not sure how it'll help my poetry yet, but they say it's essential for writers and creatives to gather curios & curiosities like this. late start, i suppose, but then so is my literary career. . .

 yes, hm, the spaced out ellipses feel ever so nice, but it is a pity when they get broken up at the end of a line.. maybe a bit too fluid, then, lmao

  

 

image by Rudy and Peter Skitterians from pixabay