And so I have immersed myself in poetry. This, I've learned, often involves a lot of nonsensical grumbling to myself and to other people (usually authors) who aren't really there, and occasionally throwing things. Also, I'm constantly turning up in my purse/backpack/pockets bizarre little image descriptions written on the back of grocery receipts, crumpled flyers, my Italian homework, etc. (Often I don't remember writing these but am delighted by them; it's like finding a $20 bill in the pocket of your washed jeans.) It's a marvelous and frustrating thing I've gotten myself into, and quite messy work if you want to do it right. It intensifies the focus almost painfully on the basic unit of words. Words, these crazy little conflations of sound and symbol and meaning that I've fallen hopelessly in love with, become simultaneously mushy and electrified. And in the end, they are inevitably imperfect. Destined to fail. But hell, that's half the fun. If there were a perfect way to transmit inspiration, I'd probably have a psychotic break trying to deal with it. So I figure I will show my love for words (and their relationship with each other and with us) in the best way I know how--by respecting them and using them to their fullest advantage, furthering their "ends", as Kant would have it. Because for me, words are not just a means from point A to point B, they are things to be worked with and reveled in for themselves. Which might seem a bit odd, considering they're an arbitrary construct, albeit a monstrously important one.
But I'll cease my sentimental gush. Soon I will start posting work I've done this semester. Hopefully it will be revised, but as I'd like to start posting (much) more regularly, I'll probably throw some of the rawer stuff too. But now I must switch gears and work on Serious Critical Analysis, which of course has its merits, but often depresses me a bit.
On a lighter, unnecessary note: Sleeping kitties are the cutest thing in the world. Period.
