Friday, May 28, 2010

Excitement.

Hooray! It looks like all is well in the world of the book. That is, in Money for Sunset's world. The world within the book is still a little bit messy -- what with our world being messy as it is, but the proofs are proofed and gorgeous, thanks to Tom C. Hunley and his crew.

I've had more people ask me what the book is "about," not satisfied with the answer, "well, it's poetry, prose poetry." (Yes, I say this kind of like Bond, James Bond.) So I'm working out a description my aunts or my grandpa could spout when someone asks. Something along the lines of...

"An individual examination of our culture of deficit. You know, with sex and stuff thrown in."

Okay, so it's a working description. But that first part I like. And there is a lot of sex in the book. Appropriate sex, sex in inappropriate places, beach sex, imagined sex. I could go on.

In reading the book again while proofing I realized,

a) Hey, this is a really good book! (I hadn't read it in probably more than a year, so distanced it seems sometimes like some other creature wrote it. But they are my obsessions in there.)

b) There is a lot of talk about overconsumption, and specifically about oil. Oddly. I finished this book more than two years ago, but somehow all the environmental stuff that crops up seems way more relevant today than it did even then.

Must. Walk. Dog.

Thanks for checking in.

Sunday, May 2, 2010

A poem is not an abstraction.

Excerpt from a letter from Lee Hickman to Todd Baron (lifted from this place, if you want to read more):

You talk of “pure charge.” Pure charge is the meaning. In a poem, there is no other saying. What is said and how charged it is said are the same thing. As in life, the generosity and intensity of your love is that love, there is no separating them from it. A poem is not an abstraction. It is a product of the body. It is not the fingerprint. It is the fingertip. No poem goes beyond meaning. Meaning is the body. Yr body.