I like this song. I didn't work on poetry today. I drew. It felt good. I also walked in some fantastic Colorado weather. Life is good. I like this song.

I got some help with the manuscript and am feeling better, but am now thinking about sticking with Seven as a title. I've gone back and forth at least five times now, so we'll just have to wait to see what the title will be.

Luckily, P is going to help me with the table of contents/ section titles program it's in in Word.

I am getting excited about Canto Mundo next month. My mom will be driving to Austin with me and will stay with her good friend Little Lucy. So, she will arrive with me to Canto Mundo!!! Yay!!!

Then after Canto Mundo we will visit my sister in Dallas. So, I'm really looking forward to the trip and the retreat. It was really good last year.

Today I will walk and try to do so mindfully, which is difficult for me. I've enjoyed walking a bit this summer and feel more at peace than I have in a long, long time.

I've been working on the table of contents for my second manuscript, tentatively titled THE BREAKING now. I will get some computer help hopefully with this from P tomorrow. He put it in some table of contents program and now pages one to fourteen don't have page numbers anymore. It's been a year since it was put into the program, so who knows what I did. Hopefully I haven't screwed it up or anything. I have been steadily trimming the manuscript and am feeling better about it these days, recognizing the content and aesthetics of trauma may not appeal to some, but I have to write the book the way I wrote it. I will trim some more modifiers, yet part of the wildness in the book, I want to keep. That's the whole point re: breaking, the breaking, the fall etc. One reviewer kind of said the manuscript was a "maverick on a mad run."

It is difficult for me to move on and send it back with some criticism that it's not yet ready, but I have been working on it quite a bit now, so hopefully I can get the help I need with the table of contents and send it to reviewers. I don't mind going through another round of revisions after they look at it.

Ugh. I'm wanting to listen to some Enya and work on newer poems, which I have a lot of now. I have some work still out at various places and so far, the feedback has been good, a lot of ink on rejections and a lot of encouraging comments. I had 3 taken, so hopefully more will be taken. I have a huge batch of newer poems which I would like to start focusing on in regards to revision.

Life is good, better than it has been in years. I feel the manuscript is coming together, and I'm able to identify my own sensibilities matter just as much as those of other people. I tend to be a people pleaser and am wanting to please others with it, but the fact of the matter is, I was a "maverick on a mad run" of sorts when I wrote it. It's not titled The Breaking for nothing.

I am basically enjoying my time to write and revise very much. I am extremely broke ALL THE TIME, but I am finally free from the burden of being an adjunct. My time to heal is here. Some are saying I need to get a book out because where I am in my life, because of where I've been. I think they may have a point, but I am in no real hurry, but there's time to revise with editors.

Recovery

We were as voiceless children, offered up
for the entitlement of others. We were as mimes,
our faces hidden beneath make-up.
Our hands were the hands of children,
our bodies shocked into adulthood.

When I was a child I prayed to God,
turned to what’s visible,
saints glistening in blue windows,
a priest gathering sins up into the coals.

My father, a figure in the corner,
a sharp headless looming, a disastrous need
I could not name sin.
Easier to forget and forget I did.

Praise the child of Lethe
and this woman now remembering violence.

I want to believe in something miraculous,
but the sea of sky calls me to sobriety.
God wasn’t a figure or a form? God, a summer respite
after the breaking. We can beg for forgiveness,
but we must first forgive our limitations.

Risen to the pink sunrise, the crazy coos of birds,
and the silence of waking, we are as children,
as blooms and flickering stars. Everything a comparison
of wonder. There is justice in the still day—

beauty in the morning light. As a child,
the desert sun set spectacular along hilltops.
Here now in Saratoga Springs comes
a still slow recovery.
The sun glints and tops the pines.

We are at once as the first sunrise,
as the first willows in the wind.
We are the first heron on the stillest lake,
ribbons of moonlight cast along water.



*

I am posting the above poem because I want to see it in a new light. Somehow, having an actual audience, however small, gets me to revise better. Right now I'm still struggling with revision, though I have trimmed and cut a lot out of the manuscript, I recognize that the subject matter, childhood abuse, death and recovery are difficult to get a grip on. The language of trauma is flat? I am trying and trying to recover, as well as get a grip on the poems. Lots of uncertainty and doubt, lots of fear too. I think I am just going to have to get over it and send the manuscript back to the reviewers soon, so I can receive their feedback. So, here's to a work in progress, slow progress.

Painful to look at

This song is appropriate to how I feel tonight. I feel utterly inept with the manuscript. But today it's over. Tomorrow is another day, but tonight I feel like I can no longer write. It's just a struggle to revise. I am thinking about cutting seven poems out of the manuscript now. I don't have the energy I need to revise them. They are sloppy. It's not only confidence that has exited. I've been encouraged to revise, but the fact of the matter is that I want to start over at the moment. I don't even know if I can ever publish again. I will speak with someone tomorrow about four or five of the poems I am uncomfortable with and see what his opinion is. The manuscript deals with sexual abuse, death of a loved friend, and simply breaking down. There is no real uplift or aha moment as I haven't resolved so much in my own day to day life. The language is flat. The language of trauma is flat. I am trying to dig myself out of this hole. It's hard as it's the same hole I find myself in repeatedly, so how to go around the hole, spend time going in a new direction. Maybe tomorrow I'll be able to focus on revising, on the fact that healing comes next. I've sent the manuscript to a talented female reader and maybe her take will be more positive on it. I am seriously struggling with these poems. It's painful to look at them.

"You do not even have to leave your room. Remain sitting at your table and listen. Do not even listen, simply wait. Do not even wait, remain still and solitary. The world will freely offer itself to you unasked. It has no choice. It will roll in ecstasy at your feet." Kafka from Ted Kooser's The Poetry Home Repair Manual.