I read Mark Strand has quit poetry to focus on his artwork and memoir pieces.
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I am awake at 3-4 a.m. and my mother has just told me to go back to bed. But I can't sleep. I'm wide awake! She is upset with me because I am drinking coffee. :( I'm an odd bird to her, but it is not time to sleep. I am antsy.

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In the end, one must hold true to his/her work. My uncle, a painter, said to me tonight something to the effect that he is now confident in his work, that criticisms of it no longer bother him. His paintings are his creations, so how can another judge them? I would like to have more security re: my work.

Pleasure in creation. That's where the joy is. It is in the act of creation. So much else is irrelevant.

I am terribly worried about the second manuscript. It is quite painful. I just need to move on and write new work. Maybe I'll get some positive feedback. I guess everyone suffers from self-doubt, from insecurity? No, my uncle's words about people leaving a concert or a movie complaining about it, that they really have no right as it was not a part of them, of their own creativity. Ugh, I can't explain what he said right, but I do hope that he can do the cover of my next book. He is right, and he said it took him 35 years to believe confidently in his work.

My step-father, adoptive father was terribly abusive, and I have until this day, too much fear and worry. I often get jealous due to the fact that my twin siblings were unabashedly favored. There's a lot to write about, a lot to recover from. And so I will revisit my uncle's philosophy, that no one can really criticize his work in a way that effects him, because it's his/her creation. Is it then an extension of the self, the self that so many mock? Individuality is mocked now in poetry??!!

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P says that part of the problem is that I wasn't raised in that upper middle class academic background, that I am not comfortable in it. I am coming more and more to acceptance, to a place of peace, and I feel the third time is the charm. It's okay that I am where I am.


I go to Canto Mundo soon, and will hopefully find community not mere self-promotion. In the end, I have to find a place of work, of action, of creativity. It's the only way. I look forward to seeing a few folks who are a reflection of this philosophy of my uncles, people who revel in the act of writing. One such fellow, told me once that he didn't care if he ever published. He ended up winning the Walt Whitman award.