My hate affair with poetry

Poetry is not my native tongue. It requires me to think like a sailor and speak like an angel simultaneously. I blame the current state of our relationship on Hashimoto, the verse writing professor at HCC who was so diabolically evil that I took three classes from her in two years. I entered Hashimoto's first class with a secret crush on short story -- but verse writing seduced me, spent an hour in my sheets and then beat me up and left me for dead. I've been chasing it ever since.

To me, poetry is a discipline, a kickboxing workout for the mind. I emerge from it thoroughly sweaty and smelling like a middle school locker room; we both pretend that tomorrow it will be all patchouli and white lace, but I know better. And the deception is part of the masochistic magic, of course. What challenge is it to flirt with something that wants to be mastered?

So as much as I would like to write happy stories about fluffy brown sheep, I think my path leads in the direction of kings and giants. Today I have nothing but a handful of stones. But perhaps tomorrow I will learn to be more clever, luring the poems tent-side and driving pegs through their temples.

Seurat writing

I'm getting sloppy in my 32-year-old age. I find myself throwing words at pages, as if life depended on dashing toward the next idea instead of stopping to place each thought precisely where - and how - it belongs. Pollock writing may create an impression, but it requires nothing of me; and paradoxically, the utter lack of investment saps far more energy than actual crafting.

This is a place for Seurat writing, though on most days it will probably be meaningless dots on the page. However, pointillism itself is a discipline, and like other disciplines, it will reap a harvest of righteousness for those who have been trained by it. In a year, I will think about product. My concern for now is technique.