Tristan Marshall gave me a button that says, "I like poetry and poking dead things with sticks."  He told me the two can be oddly similar at times.  Like beating a dead horse.  Or poking dead things with sticks to make sure they won't bother you anymore.

I'm not sure I agree although I definitely see the correlation. 

Writer's have this way of processing all the good, bad and ugly that happens to them.  Very few writers I've ever been close with have used the words "i feel" in a sentence.  Something gets twisted around in their language.  They instead write, "Jimmy didn't like the way the wind crept up his spine, or the eerie bones of  trees pointing emaciated fingers at the desperate sky, as though shifting the blame to the moon."  If you're a poet, it's worse.  It's:  "death hangs around me like a shadow, a tattered coat that no longer keeps out the wind..."  And actually, you're in Tempe, Arizona.  The sun is shining and you're having a cup of coffee and maybe a slight headache or ringing in your ears from the laughter the night before.   Writers have always been fascinating to me this way.  I know this happens with other art genres too but because writers are using words to piece together what they might feel, many expect the literal.  I guess you could write "I feel..." but writers rarely do.  Why assign a label when you can create a scene?  Why tell someone how you feel when you can show them with vivid illustration? 

Of course, there are those elements of victimization that sometimes appear...and I guess that's why some would say 'poetry is like beating a dead thing with a stick.'  But there is a difference between creating a scene wherein a character believes they are the victim verses a narrator who believes the whole world is against them verses someone who has succeeded at something in spite of lost opportunities or dejection.   There is a difference between taking an inventory of all the adversity of your life or publicly eviscerating oneself in the hopes of changing someone's mind about something.  In hopes of making them feel a fraction of what you felt.  In hopes of understanding and humanity.

Last night, I read/critiqued five poems, discussed literary theory, talked about song writing and the compounds of commerical music, found a poem that is one of my favorites but I hadn't read in a while.  I prefer imagery and non specifics.  Rather than be told I should feel moved, I like it to not be an option.  I like when a word pairing surprises me and even if it doesn't mean anything at all, I like if it is beautiful or raw or exotic.  I pick up faces of strangers, and lovers, and my family in lines.  I pick up pieces of myself at different points in my life.  I get angry when professors tell me there has not been an honest moment to revolutionize poetry since the British Romantic period because it's balony.  It is easy to be isolated inside the university world but to utterly submerge from any growth of expression means you lost it.  As an artist or intellectual or educator, you have lost touch with the real world.  This is an epidemic.

Yesterday, at the Phoenix Market, I was watching performers and thinking:  No, we're not all so polished that we'd make it through a season of reality TV.  We're too raw for mainstream.  We forget our lines, wear scars on our faces, carry extra weight around.  We have health problems, or money problems, or life problems.  Some can break down Shakespeare line for line, metaphor for metaphor but can't understand our checking accounts.  We're not overly processed, or synthetic versions of art.  We are the finger-blistered bleeding wrists and eyes, the hearts choked with fear, fiery dreams doused in the cold sweat of reality.  But we are artists and we are the next 'real movement' to revolutionize poetry, music, art.  And, under the thumb of LA, or NY, or Chicago, some of the most intensely brilliant people I've ever spent time with live in Arizona. And without all the nonsense and noise of 'trying to be someone.'  You know you already are.

These are some thoughts I will likely iron out or build on later.  I just woke up about an hour ago.  Excited to spend the day reacquainting with my novel (and I should do some homework while I'm at it), I realized I have a few errands to run first.  I don't like going out in the morning.  Not because I'm not a morning person but because I am.  My thoughts are clearest before the world intrudes.  When I wake up, I know what I want to say but by midday, I lose my focus almost completely.

That said, I'm going to finish my coffee and my blog right now.  There is a lot of work to do today.