gemtactics : a journal

The illusion of delusion -- really I am into a steely-minded self-analysis tonight.

It's interesting to write about characters in poems. Women. I like naming them. Sketching them with one or two details. It always starts a direction. This works like fiction, although I can't write fiction, I mean I don't want to write fiction. The characters resemble me to some extent, but I am relieved that they aren't me. I have enough distance to go somewhere else with them. This is an expansive principle and gets the poem out of I-ville.

Sounds. It can be so relaxing to just write down a combination of similar sounds that doesn't make any sense. "Rousing house." Carousel echoes arousal but the poem didn't want to go there. Even though I toyed with that combination for some moments.

Repetition. What a hoot! Repetition. As a child I wrote some ballads, as instructed, with extremely tedious refrains. I have also gotten myself trapped in lengthy and annoying list poems. More subtle repetition is such a surprise. It makes you ask "Why?" and you notice the repeated word more closely, oh yeah, Winter.

Now here came a new idea for repetition. The storm drain. If I structured it right, which I did not do, I could have created the effect of water swirling around, caught, caught, caught in the storm drain. Building a construction of meaning, overloaded with sound, using repetition. Is this so exciting?

Images. A poor poem contributes one or two interesting images. How generous. The blushing bush is worthwhile; it echoes the burning bush and has an aura of the forbidden feminine. And an internal rhyme. And then a storm drain in the upstairs bedroom. This is an emotionally satisfying image to me. I recognize an image that feels healing. What's wrong with that? And I like fractured architectures.

Now explicit searching is just plain dangerous and lazy. I know it. I had to make the characters do some activity. Searching reached into some matrix of normality, what people do, some spiritual pursuit that struck me as so phony in the poem. I don't know how to fix it. Doubt oozing from her knees is not bad though. That sensation of visceral disgust is interesting to me. Grabs, but does it let go. The combination of abstract doubt and such physical words as oozing and knees. Is this too standard a technique? Poetry 101.

The eyebrows. Eyebrows are so mesmerizing. I was picturing my sister's eyebrows. The last stanza wanted to take off from there, but there was no direction at that point. I shot the poem down with that searching. A poem could be started from a single facial feature. Why not more faces in poems. Remember babies are fascinated by them and beauty is located in their symmetry.

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	November 14, 2000
	critiques, free
	The illusion of delusion -- really I am into a steely-minded self-analysis tonight. It's interesting to write about characters in poems. Women. I like naming them. Sketching them with one or two details. It always starts a direction. This works like fiction, although I can't write fiction, I mean I don't want to write fiction. The characters resemble me to some extent, but I am relieved that they aren't me. I have enough distance to go somewhere else with them. This is an expansive principle and gets the poem out of I-ville. Sounds. It can be so relaxing to just write down a combination of similar sounds that doesn't make any sense. "Rousing house." Carousel echoes arousal but the poem didn't want to go there. Even though I toyed with that combination for some moments. Repetition. What a hoot! Repetition. As a child I wrote some ballads, as instructed, with extremely tedious refrains. I have also gotten myself trapped in lengthy and annoying list poems. More subtle repetition is such a surprise. It makes you ask "Why?" and you notice the repeated word more closely, oh yeah, Winter. Now here came a new idea for repetition. The storm drain. If I structured it right, which I did not do, I could have created the effect of water swirling around, caught, caught, caught in the storm drain. Building a construction of meaning, overloaded with sound, using repetition. Is this so exciting? Images. A poor poem contributes one or two interesting images. How generous. The blushing bush is worthwhile; it echoes the burning bush and has an aura of the forbidden feminine. And an internal rhyme. And then a storm drain in the upstairs bedroom. This is an emotionally satisfying image to me. I recognize an image that feels healing. What's wrong with that? And I like fractured architectures. Now explicit searching is just plain dangerous and lazy. I know it. I had to make the characters do some activity. Searching reached into some matrix of normality, what people do, some spiritual pursuit that struck me as so phony in the poem. I don't know how to fix it. Doubt oozing from her knees is not bad though. That sensation of visceral disgust is interesting to me. Grabs, but does it let go. The combination of abstract doubt and such physical words as oozing and knees. Is this too standard a technique? Poetry 101. The eyebrows. Eyebrows are so mesmerizing. I was picturing my sister's eyebrows. The last stanza wanted to take off from there, but there was no direction at that point. I shot the poem down with that searching. A poem could be started from a single facial feature. Why not more faces in poems. Remember babies are fascinated by them and beauty is located in their symmetry.