this post is more for me than you, but Hi! Welcome!

It's that time again when I need to just stop, think, and type out all of the ideas/projects/tasks floating around in my brain before they crash into each other and start a fire.

I'm overwhelmed but in a good way! I'd always rather be overwhelmed than underwhelmed. First, my new position with H_NGM_N (like us on Facebook!) has exposed me to and connected me with so many talented and inspiring individuals. I am blown away and so thankful to be in contact with these people, to read their work and share it with others. And the more I read, the more I want to write! I want to write all the time! I'm suddenly overcome by ideas for my own work and there's so much I want to do with my manuscript! SO MUCH. I just need to find the time! I'll be sending Packet #3 off in a week and after that have just two left... I'm at the point where I kind of want to tear everything up and make a big mess. Probably that's what is going to happen.

Also, my lecture! At graduation residency I have to give a lecture, and I just got this book from the library that has my ideas exploding left and right... I have a draft of the lecture that my advisor responded to, and I have quite a bit of revision/editing that needs to be done... but need to wait until I have an entire day, a full 8 hours or something, to devote my attention to it.

And photography! I've gone back and forth about whether I should continue with the business, and after photographing a gorgeous wedding this past weekend, I feel confident about continuing the business for now.. I've launched a sister site to my main website, called FOTO, as a way to better promote what I really want to do. I love photographing people but am most interested in fashion and weddings and engagements... so this site is geared towards that. With the photography business, as with most businesses, it's very easy, and tempting, to get caught up in trends. There is SO MUCH you can do with a business, and I found myself becoming wrapped up in the trends, in the blogging and the packaging and all of that, the commercial side of things, when really I'm coming at photography as an artist. I am not a business person. I am an artist, and that's how I need to market myself. The people who dig that will hire me, and that's cool. Photography will never be my full-time career, so I'm okay with not being the most popular or being featured in Minnesota Bride and all of that... BUT, I do have a ton of photo projects coming up! SIX couple/engagement sessions within the next month! And besides Facebook, word of mouth from clients is the best advertising.

On top of all of that, plus some other projects, I just started a part-time job at a liquor store in town. As much as freelancing is awesome because you get to be your own boss and make your own schedule, it's also awesome to be clocked in, knowing you're making money, knowing you will get a paycheck, however small it may be. I've got big dreams and need some money to make them happen! And student loans I'll need to start repaying once I graduate this winter... Yikes.

My "down-time" is the time I get to spend with Evelyn. The past few days here have been crisp and wonderful, and we love being outside! Yesterday we went for a great nature walk, found a "deer castle," played at the park, stood still and breathed in the air...

She's my love bug and keeps me sane, reminds me to look at the pretty pink sky, the moon and the stars...

"Letters to a young poet.."

My friend and incredibly talented writer Adam Love gave a lecture this morning titled "Letters to a Young Poet," in which he so beautifully addressed the nature of the MFA program, how it's about so much more than just getting a degree, that writing is living a lifestyle as opposed to practicing a profession, and how Rainer Maria Rilke basically set up the model of the low-residency MFA program, in his remarkable Letters to a Young Poet, the collection of letters he wrote to Franz Kappus, the young, confused, anxiety-ridden poet. Adam addressed the difficulty of explaining to others our reasons for writing, for paying $40,000 to earn a degree that isn't "practical" in the way an MBA might be practical. He addressed the necessary loneliness of being a writer, our obsession with not only language but what it means to be human..."The writing life is lonely, bred from your solitude..." he said, and he quoted the poet and former VCFA student Andrew Nurkin, who notes that the MFA is so much more than a degree, that "The MFA is a set of experiences, relationships, and revelations..."

There's so much more I could say but don't have the time right now, so I'll leave you with an excerpt from one of Rilke's letters:

"No one can advise or help you -- no one. There is only one thing you should do. Go into yourself. Find out the reason that commands you to write; see whether it has spread its roots into the very depths of your heart; confess to yourself whether you would have to die if you were forbidden to write. This most of all: ask yourself in the most silent hour of your night: must I write? Dig into yourself for a deep answer. And if this answer rings out in assent, if you meet this solemn question with a strong, simple "I must", then build your life in accordance with this necessity; your whole life, even into its humblest and most indifferent hour, must become a sign and witness to this impulse."

"There's not enough room in the world..."

"There's not enough room in the world
to turn your life around..."

--from a poem by Mark Cox, read this evening, thunder outside

music & poetry & VCFA update

Summer residency is quickly heading toward its bittersweet end.... Today is a low-key day in terms of scheduled readings and lectures... All that's on my schedule today is lunch with my advisor and a reading. The afternoon of the fourth is always like "the weekend" -- there's the prose v. poets softball game, and a catered picnic, and the talent show.... basically everyone is encouraged to take the afternoon and evening off. I don't think anyone needs much encouraging!

Last night was the graduation dance party, which was much needed. After being in my head so damn much, I was craving some loud music and an opportunity to MOVE MY BODY. So fun. I miss my speakers at home.

A friend shared this song with me the other day. I'm hooked:



Do you remember the late morning
when we went back to bed,
when we found the first position
and every muscle rested

I do remember that I already knew
it was the last time,
the last time for first positions
the last time you'll be mine

Aaaaoo aoo aoo ao
Aaaaoo aoo aoo ao

Do you remember the scars I showed you
the stories I told you
how I always said forever
when you aksed me to stay true

do you remember when we forgot
how to smile at each other
to believe that the other
wants only whats good for you

Do you remember the late morning
when we went back to bed,
when we found the first position
and every muscle rested

I do remember that I already knew
it was the last time,
the last time for first positions
the last time you'll be mine


And here's the poem I'm especially loving today, "Inside Out" by Diane Wakowski 

I walk the purple carpet into your eye

carrying the silver butter server

but a truck rumbles by,

                      leaving its black tire prints on my foot

and old images          the sound of banging screen doors on hot   

             afternoons and a fly buzzing over the Kool-Aid spilled on   

             the sink

flicker, as reflections on the metal surface.

Come in, you said,

inside your paintings, inside the blood factory, inside the   

old songs that line your hands, inside

eyes that change like a snowflake every second,

inside spinach leaves holding that one piece of gravel,

inside the whiskers of a cat,

inside your old hat, and most of all inside your mouth where you   

grind the pigments with your teeth, painting

with a broken bottle on the floor, and painting

with an ostrich feather on the moon that rolls out of my mouth.

You cannot let me walk inside you too long inside   

the veins where my small feet touch

bottom.

You must reach inside and pull me

like a silver bullet

from your arm.

And lucky to be here

"Even though we are in poetry school - -and lucky to be here -- isn't it true that we are dealing with something that began before time...?"

--Matthew Dickman in his lecture today

Poem: If You Knew by Ellen Bass

This morning I went to a great lecture on Surrealism. Here's a poem that was cited:

If You Knew
by Ellen Bass

What if you knew you'd be the last
to touch someone?
If you were taking tickets, for example,
at the theater, tearing them,
giving back the ragged stubs,
you might take care to touch that palm,
brush your fingertips
along the life line's crease.

When a man pulls his wheeled suitcase
too slowly through the airport, when
the car in front of me doesn't signal,
when the clerk at the pharmacy
won't say Thank you, I don't remember
they're going to die.

A friend told me she'd been with her aunt.
They'd just had lunch and the waiter,
a young gay man with plum black eyes,
joked as he served the coffee, kissed
her aunt's powdered cheek when they left.
Then they walked half a block and her aunt
dropped dead on the sidewalk.

How close does the dragon's spume
have to come? How wide does the crack
in heaven have to split?
What would people look like
if we could see them as they are,
soaked in honey, stung and swollen,
reckless, pinned against time?

quitting the photo business?

I think I might have to give up the photography business. Or should I say, I think I want to give up the photography business...

At least, I'm not taking on any more new projects starting now. I'm following my instincts. It's just not where my heart is, and for the amount of time and energy it takes, the little money I make is definitely not enough to make me want to keep going. In the business world, you have to keep up if you want to survive--keep up with technology, equipment, trends, marketing, etc....

I could half-ass it, but that would be wrong. Do it right or don't do it at all.

Poetry. That's where my heart is. And I'm about to begin my fourth and final semester of grad school at the best low-residency MFA writing program in the country. And I'm working with Matthew Dickman, a personal favorite and truly talented poet. And he's going to help me put my first book manuscript together, and there is no other option but to pour my absolute all into this, which, this time around, means making big cuts to other things, like the photography...

And I couldn't be more thrilled.

p.s. the Fucking Lit Party was fucking amazing, although I didn't come away with photos. The setting was so warm and intimate, once the reading began I just wanted to be in the moment, no distractions, no photographs.

F**king Lit Party

It's the morning of the fourth full day of residency, the sky is blue, and I'm feeling pretty good. It's around day 3 that everyone begins to feel pretty settled, sliding into the routine of things. And after tonight everyone will be much more relaxed, once we find out which advisor we'll be working with all semester. Fourth semester students, like myself, virtually always get their first choice of advisor, but we still have to list three preferences, which kind of freaks some people out (like me!).

It's difficult to summarize experiences here in Vermont, partly because they're so amazing that no words seem right, and partly because there is so much going on, my brain feels more cluster fucked than usual. But in a good way, because it's cluster fucked with everything poetry.

A few of my friends are staying in a house off campus, and tonight we're having a reading there, with a few students and even some faculty members, aptly named "Fucking Lit Party," and so I have to decide which pieces I want to read...

I have a feeling today will be a long, exhilarating day. The best kind of days.

Also, yesterday I finally had the opportunity to meet the poet Ralph Angel, a faculty member who hasn't been on campus the past few residencies, though I wish he would have! I'd like to have an extra semester so I could work with him. Very, very cool. Read his poem, "The Loneliest Man in The World."

Also, can you believe I haven't taken my camera out of my bag yet? It's interesting, when I'm doing a lot of photography work, I really miss writing. And I get anxious if I don't make time to write. But when I'm focusing on writing... I don't really miss photography. Not in the same way. I think that says something. I should probably take the camera out tonight though, to capture some of the Fucking Lit Party, which is bound to be epic, because the people here are [epic].

"To live is so startling..."

"To live is so startling, it leaves little room for any other occupation."

"Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again, expecting different results. But hey, that's writing poetry. It's also getting out of bed every morning."

--quotes from yesterday morning, from Mary Ruefle's lecture on lectures she will never give

In the Land of Oz...

My travels went well and I am in my dorm room in Montpelier, Vermont. I was very tired throughout the day but as soon as I got to campus (even though it's raining) I felt a surge of energy go through me, sparks of memories from past residencies, and excitement for all to come in the next 10 days.

Then I unpacked. Put the sheets on my bed. Brushed my teeth. Changed. Went to dinner. Met some new students.

And now I'm exhausted. I'm running off of five hours of highly interrupted sleep, and I will crash into my bed tonight and it will feel awesome.

I plan on getting a GREAT night's sleep, getting up for a run in the morning, and spending some time in downtown Montpelier, soaking in the calm until the craziness begins.

It's good to be back, Green Mountain State. I've missed you.

What it's like to go to Vermont in the summer...

Let me elaborate: What it's like to be a grad student at the Vermont College of Fine Arts and attend summer residency.

Awesome.

That's one word to describe it.

And exhausting.

And pretty much awesome.

I leave for Vermont in just six days, and yesterday the residency schedule was emailed to us, which makes me extra excited/nervous. Because of Evelyn's birthday and the wedding I have to photograph, I don't have much to think about/mentally prepare for my time away, but I thought I'd share a little about what we writers actually do when we're there.

When I say that I'm going away for school people automatically assume I go there and attend classes. But no, there are no classes in Vermont. There are lectures, usually about an hour long, given by the faculty and graduating students (yes, in the winter I'll be giving a lecture!) And there are readings, also given by the faculty and graduating students (and yes, in the winter I'll be giving a reading!), as well as workshops. These three things make up what I would call the "academic" component of residency.

Here is what a typical day at residency might look like:

8:30-9:30: lecture

9:45-10:45: lecture

11:15: meeting

12-1:15: lunch

1:15-3:45: workshop

4-4:30: reading

4:45-5:45: lecture

6-6:45-dinner

7:15-8:15: reading

8:30: student readings

That's actually what my first full day of residency look likes (if you're super interested you can access the schedule from the VCFA website. It's not private or anything. See here). And if my workshop leaders decide to go through our packet alphabetically, that  means I'll be workshopped on the first day (which means I will sit silently for an hour while the rest of my 11 or so peers and two faculty leaders will discuss the four poems I submitted for workshop. It's as fun as it sounds! Haha). Also, not everything is mandatory. You don't have to go to every lecture, and you technically don't have to go to any readings if you don't want to, but who does that? There are normally two lectures going on at a time, but it's usually divided by genre, so a poetry faculty member will be giving a lecture at the same time a prose faculty member is, but poetry students can attend prose lectures and vice versa. And sometimes lectures apply to all genres, to all writers.

On this first day, I will go to every lecture and reading because the 8:30 AM lecture is by Mary Ruefle (a truly incredible writer and artist--it's the first lecture and it's early but the room will be full, I'm sure); the second lecture is by Rigoberto Gonzalez, who was my amazing advisor for second semester, so of course I have to go! And the third lecture, after workshops, is by the also incredible Jen Bervin. Wow, talk about a day full of brilliance! And, to add to that, the reading at 4 includes Matthew Dickman (one of my favorite poets and hopefully fourth semester advisor!), among others, and the reading at 7 includes Leslie Ullman, the advisor I just had for my third semester. Wow wow wow.

Not every day is always this full, and it just so happens that a bunch of faculty I'm interested in hearing are giving lectures/readings on the first day, but yeah, I might be exhausted. And the student readings are a casual thing held almost each night, where non-graduating students have a chance to read their work out loud, as a way to practice the whole reading in front of a group and hearing yourself in the microphone thing. It's fun to get up there and read some poems, and it's cool to hear what your peers have been working on, but damn, a lot of times by 8:30 people are tired of sitting and listening and thinking, so then it's either time to 1) lie in bed and let your brain rest, 2) go for a walk, 3) crack open the wine, or 4) go downtown.

Sometimes, usually, it's a combination of the four, and sometimes there are things going on through the school, like the Talent Show and the Grad Party, which, because it's graduate school and we're all well into our twenties (and beyond), are really fun events (by which I mean there is usually alcohol involved. Duh.)

And on the 4th of July there is a softball game, prose writers versus poets, and a catered picnic and fireworks and all of that. Good times, good times. And, for me anyway, most nights end in good times, in amazing conversations with talented and unique individuals from all over the place, each with their own quirks and styles and fucked up stories to share, some of them fictional, all of them true.

I've never done much actual writing at residency, but I have a feeling it'll be different this time, since I've been so busy these last few weeks and unable to devote much time to my poetry. But, you never know how you feel when you arrive in Vermont. The place changes you. And after spending the past five months writing in your little corner of the world, the sudden wave of inspiration and information and writerly camaraderie can be a little overwhelming at first, especially if you're like me and somewhat neurotic and socially awkward (see my last post).

Okay, I need more coffee.

"There is a world..."

"There is a world which poets cannot seem to enter. It is the world everybody else lives in. And the only thing poets seem to have in common is their yearning to enter this world."

from Mary Ruefle's "Someone Reading a Book is a Sign of Order in the World."

Mary teaches poetry at VCFA, and I'm highly considering working with her for my last semester... she is brilliant.

More quotes from the above piece:

"I am a writer, and the next step is inevitable: I used what had been revealed to me in my own writing."

"We are all one question, and the best answer seems to be love—a connection between things."

"Our minds and the universe—what else is there? Margaret Mead described intellectuals as those who are bored when they don't have the chance to talk interestingly enough. Now a book will talk interestingly to you. George Steiner describes the intellectual as one who can't read without a pencil in her hand. One who wants to talk back to the book, not take notes but make them: one who might write "The giraffe speaks!" in the margin. In our marginal existence, what else is there but this voice within us, this great weirdness we are always leaning forward to listen to?"

And she quotes Kafka:

"'Altogether, I think we ought to read only books that bite and sting us. If the book we are reading doesn't shake us awake like a blow to the skull, why bother reading it in the first place? So that it can make us happy, as you put it? Good God, we'd be just as happy if we had no books at all; books that make us happy we could, in a pinch, write ourselves. What we need are books that hit us like a most painful misfortune, like the death of someone we loved more than we love ourselves, that make us feel as though we had been banished to the woods, far away from any human presence, like a suicide. A book must be the ax for the frozen sea within us. That is what I believe.'—Kafka in a letter, 1904"

"My work becomes my cure"

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etc.

My time in Vermont has inspired me so, as it always does, but this time it's been more life-changing than ever. I've learned to trust the process, to know that "messing up" doesn't mean I have to start from the beginning but to just continue. There is only one beginning, and everything after that is part of the process, and this is something that we can all apply not only to our work but to our lives.

I am also so inspired by Keith Smith's essay "A Book of the Book," in which he writes (my emphasis):

...Rather than waste more time, I recognize I am at a dead end. I start to work on another book, leaving this one on hold for a day, a week, or maybe five years until I know how to proceed.

This is how I work. I always have one to two dozen books in progress. When insight comes, I work on the appropriate book for as long as I am progressing. If my mind is scattered, I cut book boards, buy supplies and do the little things which do not require much critical thought. When I find I am depressed, rather than allow my mood shifts to immobilize me, I channel those feelings into an appropriate book. My work becomes my cure. When I was a student, Sonia Sheridan gave invaluable advice, "Put your work into everything, and everything into your work." The artist does not sit until inspired to make a masterpiece, and art does not have to be monumental.

I really like that part about work becoming the cure. Even if it ends up being a dead end, a non-masterpiece, it's still a part of the process, and art is an excellent cure for so, so much.

My work has become my cure--such hope this gives me.

so. tired. {and New Year's Eve in Vermont!)

Hi. I'm home from Vermont and slept almost 12 hours last night! One hour for every day in VT.... it was an intense 12 days of intellectual, emotional, creative, and social inspiration and exhaustion. And I have a lot of writing to do. I'm in my third semester of grad school! In addition to cranking out new poems and revising the not-so-new, this semester I have to write a critical thesis, which is basically a long research paper on a topic of my choice. My topic has something to do with photography and poetry...how the terms used in photography can be applied to poetry, maybe....? I need to do some research and narrow it down.

I eventually plan on sharing some quotes and things I picked up along the way from the lectures and conversations with others. I am grateful to know so many talented writers, to be able to call them my friends. For now here are some photos from the New Year's Eve lantern lighting ceremony. The photos don't do this beautiful and moving event justice, but I did what I could. Look at all those beautiful hands....

I have just one New Year's resolution:

Write more and better than last year. 

the obsession

The perspectives, styles, and aesthetics of the students and faculty at VCFA are so diverse, even within each genre of poetry, fiction, and creative non-fiction. And trying to explain these differences seems like a futile attempt because many of our aesthetics can't be explained in a few words...

BUT

the one thing we all share (I would hope) is the obsession to write, as graduating student Ian Bodkin  described in his lecture yesterday,

"...the obsession we are all bitten by and spend our entire lives trying to heal, or explain."

And it's amazing how, even when I speak with someone whose writing style is very different than mine, we both understand the obsession. And being here feeds my obsession, makes it bigger, more sprawling, more difficult to satisfy, like the universe it's expanding out of my control, which is the best thing.

Check out MudLuscious Press (AMAZING!) and go to issue 18 to read one of my poems. And then hang around and browse the other issues for some achingly beautiful and refreshing work.

Happy 2012.

"I hate goodbyes!"

In about five hours from now I'll be getting ready to leave for the airport to catch a 5:40 flight to Newark, New Jersey and from there to Burlington, Vermont (and from there a shuttle to Montpelier).

I have mixed feelings about leaving for 11-12 days, but they're mostly on a positive note--I am so thankful to be able to be a full-time graduate student, studying the subject I am most passionate about, becoming a better writer, thinker, person... and I'm so grateful to have met so many amazing writers from around the country and the world, and for the opportunities to work with some amazing faculty.

So why is my stomach a twisted knot? Why have I not been able to eat dinner besides a few spoonfuls of noodles and clementine?

I think a lot of it has to do with the social aspect of residency at VCFA--living in the dorms again, being in close quarters, eating together, etc. SMALL TALK. MAKING CONVERSATION WITH OTHER HUMAN BEINGS. It's not a big deal but I get all anxious about it. But then when it happens it's fine. I make friends. But I was always shy, so shy that when I was young I'd follow my brother, who's two years younger than me, around the park and just be friends with whoever he was making friends with. Which was pretty much everybody, that social butterfly..... I'm older now and have gone through college, and, thankfully, don't need my brother to make friends for me (although sometimes I wish he still could!), but a bit of that anxiety always remains. I feel like I'm socially awkward but probably I'm not.

My stomach is also a little flip-floppy because it's hard to say good-bye! We dropped Evelyn off at my parents' earlier this evening, so I've already said good-bye to her, and she knows I'm leaving (I showed her Vermont on the globe), and she knows I'm in school and all that, and she'll be distracted and having fun when I'm gone, but it still hurts my heart a little to leave her. But I didn't cry this time! Not even when I got to the car. That's a big step!

It also hurt my heart to say good-bye to my brother, who is on leave from basic training but will head back to Fort Benning, Georgia, before I return from Vermont. I still can't believe how much he's grown up! In the Army now, a soldier...

And I'm counting on going to his graduation in February, but after that who knows where he'll go. Ah, my heart--it's a fistful of leaves shaking in the wind....

Got to think good thoughts, though. And laugh. Be. Strong.



This next scene was one of my and my brother's favorites--we'd rewind it over and over again, rolling on the floor with laughter.



I should go pack now...

The First Thing to Learn in Art School

My Vermont residency is coming up and this time I'm in a special workshop called "Visual Poetry," led by my first semester advisor Jody Gladding and hopefully-my-third-semester advisor Jen Bervin. I'm not entirely sure what to expect, but our pre-req reading is Kit White's 101 Things to Learn in Art School, a 6x6 book of gems!

As White says, "Art is not separate from life; it is the very description of the lives we lead." Art is important because it "studies the world, in all its manifestations, and renders back to us not simply how we see, but how we react to what we see and what we know as a consequence of that seeing..."

There is more to say, of course, on the necessity of art in our lives, but for now I want to share with you the first thing to learn in art school:

"Art can be anything: It is not defined by medium or the means of its production, but by a collective sense that it belongs to a category of experience we have come to know as 'art.'"

Note, however, that this is not to say that "anything can be art." As White states in lesson #36, "Don't just make designs--say something." Which can be applied to poetry, and to photography--don't just string words together, and don't just snap away without saying something. Says White,

Pleasing design alone does not make interesting art. Design is only the first step in making something substantive and convincing. To succeed, an image (and words are images, by the way), must lead to something beyond the mechanics of formal arrangement. It must be integral to a larger discussion about the world in which it was created, and the history of its own form...

The forms that this discussion can take are endless, and the specifics of the discussion itself are endless, but what remains at the core is discussion about the world. Art is an ongoing and engaging process, yielding discovery for both the maker and the viewer/reader/etc., and I think that's what drives me to write. When I write it's pretty much the only time I make sense of the world, of my self. It's both discovery and meditation, because I hate to be stagnant--not discovering, not creating, makes me anxious. Writing (and by "writing" I'm referring to writing poetry) is where I find peace, even if the writing itself is not necessarily peaceful. Which only makes sense because the world is not necessarily peaceful, bringing us to lesson #38 (and then I'll leave you alone. For now):

Complexity derives from the presence of contradiction: The world is not simple. It is rife with complexity. The impulse to eliminate the contradictions that create complexity is natural. But to simplify may be to render a false condition and therefore an incomplete description. Embrace the irreconcilable elements, the contradictions. They are part of any portrait of a moment.

 I don't make art, and I don't necessarily want art, that simplifies the world--that would be a silly illusion (would it be art....?) Rather I make art and go to art in order to ease my anxiety about the complexities of this world, and also to celebrate the joys of this world, of being human, here and now...

write write write write write . . .

from Jen Bervin's The Silver Book, Ugly Duckling Presse, 2010


write the precise points that touch
the rivers of energy in the body --
enter them -- and tell me -- if they are
still wet -- tell me -- where they've been
-- tell me -- who touched you all winter --
tell me who -- you'll remember -- in
spring --



jen bervin is a poetry faculty member at VCFA (among many other things). she's fascinating, wise, mesmerizing... visit her website and be sure to check out her online project A Non-Breaking Space.

not the best of weeks

"There are days when I feel as though someone has written my name on a stone
and thrown it over the side of a cliff."

--Matthew Dickman, "Amigos," All-American Poem, 2008

"The Art of Recklessness"

Another great thing I came home with from Vermont is a list of reading suggestions, both prose and poetry, and one of these books just came in the mail: The Art of Recklessness by Dean Young (I posted a poem by him the other day), recommended to me by Matthew Dickman. Matthew said that this book strongly influenced him and made him feel incredibly free. Matthew says that when we're making art, when we're writing a poem, it's the only time in our lives that we're truly free. He quotes Larry Levis, a poet who once said of poetry, "Out here I can say anything." I agree with this notion, yet I don't feel totally free yet, not in the way Matthew speaks of, and one of my goals this semester is to secure that creative freedom, to create beyond any limits, beyond potential. I've only just begun reading The Art of Recklessness and already I can tell I will gain much from it. Young opens with this:

Let us suppose that everyone in the world wakes up today and tries to write a poem. It is impossible to know what will happen next but certainly we may be assured that the world will not be made worse. I believe in the divinity of profligacy*. The creation of art, okay, just the attempt at the creation of art, as well as the appreciation of it, is both an enlarging and an expanding of the consciousness. To write a poem is to explore the unknown capacities of the mind and the heart; it is emotive, empathetic exercise and, like being struck by lightning, it will probably leave you stunned, singed, but also a bit brighter, and too your odds of being struck again then go much higher.

*I admit I had to look up the definition for profligacy, and here's what I found:

1. shameless dissoluteness*; 2. reckless extravagance; 3. great abundance

I then had to look up the definition of dissoluteness:

1. lacking moral restraint; indulging in sensual pleasures or vices.

Hmmmmm......I think I can buy into the divinity of profligacy. Sounds damn refreshing. And free.