*shuffle*shuffle*

Today I inaugurated the moleskine notebook--

--I commissioned from Sarah Frary. (love it to pieces. although I hope it doesn't go to pieces any time soon.)

While I mused that I'd use it for "themed pencil sketches" two months ago, the pages I marked upon today are filled with something much more resembling... poetry. In pencil.

I probably haven't written more than 4 lines since early 2006, and despite lyrics from that period actually being turned into a song, I haven't really cared about the medium in any significant way since probably 2001. In the lifetime arc of an artist seven years isn't really much time at all. For me, however, it's more than half of the life that I count, especially since I have changed so much in the interim.

Don't infer that I'm returning to verse. Fifty-three lines is hardly anything to write home about. But between spending more of my internet time with poets and spending mental energy searching for a slower internal rhythm, I'm not terribly surprised that poetic expression... happened.

In this intersection of theme (slowness) and form (poetry), I consider the possibility that my long-standing aversion to poetry has had a lot to do with me not wanting to take--to make--the time it requires to steep myself in the words, to equalize pressure, temperature, and salinity. Slowing down, the details are easier to access and dwell on.

The subjectivity is difficult, too. I see poetry as the least formulaic type of writing. When I write something, I find it nearly impossible to judge if it's worth anything or not. With drawing I can see in my head, or see on paper where I went right or wrong. With a story I can paraphrase the plot and pick apart so many different elements to work up in different ways; it has an abstract. Poetry... I don't see the same way. It's wholecloth, stand-alone, drawn with a single line. And temperamental.

I'm never insecure about posting my art (here) because 1) I know it's practice and I'm getting better, and 2) Reagan usually edits out the really bad stuff. And I haven't been insecure about posting whatever fiction I write because I'm familiar with how to communicate about it and within it and I'm familiar with being objective about prose. I am terrifically insecure about posting poetry; I'm prone to expressing personal thoughts without my customary adornments of tangents, clauses, and, generally, extra words. I can't tell when, if ever, something I write is more than the poetic equivalent of uneven, crayoned stick figures. That might be why the first lines I wrote today was about this renewed interest in writing poetry being a secret. :P

Here, have two scans to distract you. And me*.




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* In the course of looking in places I might find my old poetry, I found some really embarrassing, silly rhymes from 2006. Stuff like

When I was small I tried to be taller
and now that I'm taller I want to be small
The wishing and dreaming
the stilts and the scheming
but when I'm asleep it means nothing at all.

and

The night is a blanket pulled close around me
never been a sinner or saint who has found me
just to their liking or they just to mine
but if i keep moving, then I'll be just fine

Evidenced by the latter, much of what I wrote in those days was poetry of a songwriting persuasion. I'm only comfortable posting these because they're so old. Not that the new stuff is decidedly better, but it's definitely fresher.

This post has already taken an hour longer than expected. To sleep with the sounds of rain!