Y'all and Sundry

June 7, again

Okay, it's time to get pedantic and didactic and so on.

A few people have referred to my poems as "prose poetry" or "like prose poetry." They said this in the context of compliments, and I didn't feel moved to correct them, but it's happened often enough that I thought I'd address the issue here. It's just a question of semantics... but I'm a writer, and semantics matter to me.

I don't write prose poems. I know what the people meant-- they meant that my poems are strongly narrative, that they tell stories. This is true. They tell stories, so they're narrative poems, but they're not prose poems.

Prose poems are generally short, lyric, intense paragraphs. That's a generality; the only truly universal quality of prose poems is that they don't have line breaks. My poems have line breaks. In fact, line breaks are one of the things I work at hardest in my poetry, and when I used to teach poetry, my favorite lesson had to do with the effective use of line breaks.

I've read some great, powerful prose poetry. Rimbaud wrote some, and so did Jim Carroll. Prose poetry began as an experimental (non)form, a reaction against the traditional notions of what made a poem a poem (there are Young Turks in poetry, too, and like their science fictional counterparts they can be both terribly exciting and terribly annoying). Since the basic unit of poetry was once held to be the line, prose poets rejected the necessity for lines. Fair enough, though in my crankier moments I sometimes mutter that "prose poem" is an oxymoron.

I don't write prose poetry, because I love line breaks and the possibilities they provide for enhanced meaning far too much. I do write narrative poetry, because sometimes that's the only way to communicate something from the inside of my head. But there's a difference, and now you know what it is, so there we go.

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Oh, Heather. Lovely, darling Heather.

She writes such beautiful things about me-- it's so wonderful to be loved so intensely! I never have to pretend to be cool or aloof with her, I can just pour out everything and she loves it, she matches me. A dear old friend of mine (whom I desperately wanted to be more intimate with) once said to me: "You're very passionate, and you're very articulate about your passions, and sometimes that scares me." Another of my friends has commented that I focus-- that I sometimes pay attention to a single person totally, to the exclusion of everything else (though I should mention that in that context my friend was pointing out that I sometimes neglect the other people in a group, the ones to which I'm not paying such fierce and rapt attention). There are times when I'm very much like a halogen bulb, very much like a high-intensity beam, but almost always I hold something back-- both to keep from scaring the object of my attention away, and to protect myself.

With Heather, the walls all come down. I tell her exactly how I feel. I don't hold back, I don't detach, I don't protect myself.

It's terrifying. And wonderful.

She gives of herself to me just as completely. We're in so close to each other, already. We've already transformed one another in so many ways. And it just keeps getting better.

*

Cool thing: In Madison, Wisconsin, there's a flower blooming. It's a big flower. It is, in fact, the biggest flower in the world. Here's a continually updated picture of the big flower, one Amorphophallus titanum, also known as the "Corpse Flower." It's smells like rotting flesh. This is a rare and very cool thing to be blooming in the U.S. Many thanks to J. Simon for making me aware of this. J. got to see it in person, that lucky Wisconsinite...

*

So. Accomplishments today:

I grocery shopped (I have some ambitious dinner plans coming up; Heather's visiting Santa Cruz for the weekend, so I had to purchase the proper ingredients). I bought mostly healthy things, though I did let a few frozen pizzas slip in, as I really didn't feel like cooking tonight. I now have beer and rice and all is right with the world.

I queried Weird Tales about my poem "Daughter and Moon." George Scithers wrote back promptly to tell me that "Daughter and Moon" is scheduled to appear in the summer 2001 issue (#324)-- that's the next issue! Huzzah! Many many people have told me this is my best poem. I look forward rather a lot to seeing it in print...

I wrote two speculative poems, a decent one called "Front Street Minotaur" and a rather good one titled "Choosing Things." The only thing I don't like about that poem is the title; sigh. Sometimes I have trouble with poem titles. I'll mull it over a bit longer, maybe come up with something better...

I put together a package of poems to send to Asimov's, since they don't have anything else of mine in the hopper. Here's hoping they want to buy one of them...

I wrote to a prominent poet and asked him if he'd be willing to submit some work to Speculon... and he wrote back, a very friendly message, asking some questions about the guidelines. So p'raps he'll send something along.

I wrote my check to join the Science Fiction Poetry Association (or SFPA), and I'll send it in tomorrow. So soon I'll be qualified to make Rhysling nominations, which seems like a good ability for a poetry editor to have.

I did laundry. I got coffee at Pergolesi. I read the Santa Cruz Comic News. I watched one of my favorite Simpsons episodes (the one with Hank Scorpio, corporate supervillain), and a nice Tales From the Crypt, and a few minutes of an execrable Quantum Leap. I drank some tea.

Not too shabby. Things I didn't accomplish:

Finishing off the poetry slush (tomorrow, tomorrow-- should be quite doable tomorrow).

Working on the Mr. Li story (it was just a more poetryish sort of day, is all). That should be doable this weekend, assuming I can get out of the bed of Heather in the mornings-- it's so tempting to just cuddle with her.