As a poor graduate student (with few realistic career prospects in Academe), I decided to make presents for my family this year. I spent a few days locked away in my room, ripping pages out of musty old French paperbacks not worth a damn (though I still love them), drenching them in water color, then using enough Modge Podge to feel a little light-headed to glue the conglomerations together. Voilà! A collage backdrop for my poems. This one went to my sister, with whom I will also be collaborating on a chapbook in the coming months. A metalsmith, she makes intricate, tiny things out of silver. Like this ring, for instance, which looks amazingly like some mountain-scapes in our Pennsylvania neck of the woods:
Not sure how this particular art project will come together, though it might look like something like this new Matthea Harvey poem in Tin House (is this illegal?):
Aside from the chapbook project, I've decided to more or less take a break from poems for awhile, after last month's mad dash to complete a working manuscript. I'm working on a novel (if I write it very small, it seems less scary) and have decided to spend the bulk of my break drafting sections of it. After all, it is ShThFuUpAnWoOnYoNoMo, that is, "Shut the fuck up and work on your novel month." Okay, Mr. Colson Whitehead. Okay.
Maybe because it's winter, or maybe because I've been thinking a lot about good old multiple narrative thread story-telling, I'm stuck on fairy tales, the Victorians--George Eliot, Elizabeth Gaskell, Lewis Carroll, others--and A.S. Byatt, who I've come to think of as an honorary Victorian, in my reading choices. I'm especially looking forward to diving into The Children's Book and not coming up for air for awhile.
If you need me, I'll be in my blankets.
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