“I can never read all the books I want; I can never be all the people I want and live all the lives I want. I can never train myself in all the skills I want. And why do I want? I want to live and feel all the shades, tones and variations of mental and physical experience possible in life. And I am horribly limited.” --Sylvia Plath

Friday, December 23, 2011

"I Heart Your Fate" (and my new goal) (and a question for you)

This is the title of the poetry collection that came in the mail yesterday. It's by Anthony McCann and I ordered it last week based on this review in H_NGM_N, which excerpted these lines, from the poem "Your Voice":

And the trees opened their shirts and stepped out of their shirts
Out of their pants stepped out of their pants
And the trees started to weep I mean rain it was raining
And stood there all human and naked and shaking

Fucking beautiful.

McCann's poems are addicting, even though I don't necessarily understand them upon first or second read. Some of them I might never understand fully, but the language is so beautiful, so musical, and the images he conjures up for me are magic, and so I'm okay with not fully understanding. His poetry is a sensory experience.

One of my new goals, so to speak, is to not get on the computer first thing every morning, but to sit with a book of poems and my journal. Some mornings I do this anyway, but other times, especially when I've just done a photo shoot, I get on the computer first thing. The big desktop computer in my office. But I don't want to do that. I want every morning to be spent quietly with words, and having my laptop out is okay for some of it, to either write up a quick blog post or begin my own poem, since I do most of my actual writing on the laptop now (the journal is for thoughts and ideas, the seeds of poems).

This morning I've been reading more of McCann's collection, published by Wave Books, and one stanza is just sticking with me, it's so beautiful. From the poem "Werther":

Soft moccasin light streams down through the leaves
Can't live a day in a world without birds!
I drag myself toward you using only my face
To see each little flower, forever, at once

...................................................................................................wow.

QUESTION: If these were your words, who is your "you"? i.e. who in your life do these lines make you think of? Who would you drag yourself toward using only your face.....?

Answer in the comments if you like. Next time I'll tell you my answer.

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