One thing I would like to do in 2009 is blog more regularly and substantially. So this is a step in that direction.
I am confident about 2009. Maybe it’s just because I’m so glad 2008 is over. For whatever reason, I have a good feeling about 2009. Especially creatively. I still haven’t quite managed to reinvent myself as a poet, but I think I’m moving in that direction.
As I wrote in my Facebook status: I feel like, as a poet, I've been like the North in the Civil War (according to Shelby Foote) --- fighting with one hand behind my back. 2009 is when the other hand comes out, baby! I really feel that I have not yet begun to write.
Returning to my Jungian roots is an element of my little scheme. About ten years ago, I had a moment of clarity, while browsing in Shaman Drum bookstore in Ann Arbor, as to my vocation. I would be a poet, and Robert Bly’s poetry (which I was buying at the time) and the work of C.G. Jung (especially his extraordinary “Red Book”) were to be my keys to the kingdom.
For some reason, I have never quite been able to achieve what I envisioned so many years ago. Maybe it’s because, like everyone else, I keep getting pulled down into the undertow of the manic extraversion that is our culture. Maybe I just wasn’t mature enough to pursue the inner life as seriously as I hoped to. Maybe I’m still not. But I’m feeling that 2009 might finally be the time for me to get my psychic shit together.
I’ve never been one of those poets who has to struggle to find a theme or an overall vision. Perhaps because I started writing poetry a bit later than most poets, I’ve always known what to write about in the larger sense. What I struggle with is the details: what to write about, specifically, in each individual poem, and how to handle that stylistically. As I’ve previously noted, Jorie Graham seems promising to me as a link between my past work and my future work, since she also writes about the interplay between mind and not-mind (I hesitate to say mind and world, because mind is part of the world, as I see it), as I do; she also lets her form bend and flurry in keeping with her thoughts, which I still aspire to do.
I’m not sure where I’m going with this. (What the hell; it’s a blog.)
I guess what I’m trying to get at is that I am confident my poetry is about to take a leap forward, or at least a hop forward, in 2009. I hope this will lead to more publications. I’ve got two poems coming out in journals this year (in RHINO and Lake Effect), and I really hope to have more. I must admit that, despite my being a Jungian introvert, my relative lack of publications thus far is really frustrating to me. I am not one of those writers who writes for himself; I want to participate in the culture. It’s not that I want to be famous; I just want to be read. (Okay, I wouldn't mind being a little famous. But that's not my primary motivation.)
I’m hoping there will be a big craze for poems about the ontological status of matter. Fingers crossed!
Also, I intend to finally start doing some cartooning again. I started out as a cartoonist, long before I was a poet, and for a couple of years now I’ve been feeling an itch to get back to that. Sometimes this is more important to me than the poetry. Sometimes not. I’m writing a graphic novel, and improving my drawing skills in the meantime. I hope to actually begin production (which means pencilling and inking the actual final for-print pages) by late spring or early summer. Until then, I hope to post scans of an old comic-book that I made and self-published when I was 19. But first I have to find a copy; I can’t remember where I put the damned things.
So, creatively, my life is full. Not so much otherwise, but that’s not unusual. It seems I’m to be one of those people who lives for his work (and for watching DVDs of Doctor Who; I love that show so much). Therefore, I’m pleased that the work seems to be taking off, published or not.
2009 will also likely decide my professional future: PhD/professor? High school English teacher? Bum? (I’m hoping for the first, not entirely horrified by the second, and wouldn’t be surprised by the third.)
In future posts, I’ll try to elucidate my various brainstorms in greater detail, probably related to the things I’m reading. Right now, I’m about to begin a big coffee-table book about Joseph Cornell. How he fits into the great project, I don’t know, but I have a clear feeling that he does. Then Simic’s book on Cornell, then some of Simic’s own work. Then I might delve into Rilke for a while; I’ve been feeling drawn to him again. And Jung/ian stuff on the side. And drawing practice. And watching Burn Notice and Battlestar Galactica and 24 online (damn you, mid-season-starting tv shows!). And the things I do for money. Honey.
