retrospective

given the chance -- if being directly direct is cock-sure and being indirectly indirect is lost -- i'm indirectly direct. but confession doesn't suffice; these blog posts embarrass me. i come across as someone who hasn't been outside in weeks. scholastic, i guess.

often when i read a poem i wrote 10 or 14 months ago, it embarrasses me too, and i feel a difficult, mixed feeling of gratitude and disappointment: gratitude that i get to edit or banish it (to a 'history' folder), and disappointment because i then have to recharge my belief that a poem has more than its moment; the moment when it worked. then again, there are a few poems that have survived my rereads and criticism for years (though by few i do mean few), so often i recharge by attempting to believe its moment can be renewed. disappointment lingers, because i can't foresee the list of who gets renewed: every poem a firework in free-fall, beautiful and blustering to one or another degree and in the dark unknowing of whether its encore is coming.

what of it? choices. let my optimist run loose, nakedly sure crazy-era nash-like that everything matters and is simmering toward some synthesis, muttering, 'process! process! the path, the means, is meandering toward something, and anyway, is an end in itself!' ... or let my more natural voice intrude: 'think of what you want a poem to be -- sermon? (what sort? didactic? casual? self-deprecating?) code? discovery? self-discovery? -- then put up the scaffolding, then build with the building in sight. don't worry if you have to change the plan several times midway. no one is going to de-fund the project.'

i try to listen to both. it's taxing. but it feels honest, and honesty is a friend of embarrassment.