Wednesday 2 April 2008

Reading poetry

Have reduced the time on the timer still further, to allow for editing, which I always seem to need after I think I've finished.

Late getting up today, lay huddled under the sheets, thinking, thinking, and now I think I've got it: I know what I'm going to write for my review of Wislawa, and I know how I'm going to do my narrative/prose poem. Such a relief. All that is left is to do it. I am also committed to a meeting in town for an hour this afternoon that I cannot put off, so that'll be at least 2.5 hours away from the desk, and not concentrating on the work at hand.

I finished reading Kurt Vonnegut's Slapstick or Lonesome no more for the umpteenth time (I own a battered copy). That is a prose poem, I realised. Hi ho.
He begins many of his paragraphs with Yes, and .... Someone once categorised him as a Sci Fi writer. That is part of it. In this book, gravity keeps fluctuating, highs and lows, so that on hi grav days, the main character who is a President of the US, is reduced like everyone else to crawl around on all fours. Very funny.

The bell went. So quickly, also: I must must must read more poetry if I am to get the feel of it. Have retrieved my treasury of poems that Ruth gave me, 1000 pp or so. Shall start from the back, the most recent ones.



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