The filth and the fury.

Two days in revisionville. by lisa
{click to enlarge}

Energy.

Today I had to go into work. Sometimes that can be nice in the summertime, just to step into work, talk to my work colleagues, then step tidily out of it and away. It's true that the closer we get to going back to school, the less tidy stepping away feels--today, I could feel my soul working up to list-making, and I was all, Cut it out, soul! Not time for lists yet. Not. Time. But my little list is forming in the back or middle of my mind, even so.

Things got started early-ish around here this morning, I'm afraid, because people (the Historian) woke up at 6:30, and then one of our cars' alarm went off, and then I was all what the hell is going on up in this joint? so I got out of bed to ask this question. Nothing, except early rising and a car alarm, apparently. So I got back in bed. Then Bruiser decided to give his full and vocal attention to the milkman. I lazed around further in bed, and, as a science experiment, tried to go back to sleep. Nothing doing. So I got up.

Last night, I went through my manuscript (the third one, the one that isn't published and which was rejected just yesterday) with an eye for poems that just weren't pulling their weight. Also an eye for reordering things. I pulled a few poems and created a new order (perhaps a New World Order, who can say?). So this morning, I took a printed copy and shuffled the poems around, added a few new poems I wanted to add, took out the sorry slacker poems, so that the order of the manuscript corresponded with the plan I'd made last night.

I went to my meetings, we yakked about mission statements and vision statements &c &c and then I went home.

I decided to read the entire manuscript out loud to myself, to see if the order I had planned actually worked. Oh how I loved doing this, alone in my study, seeing what connections manifested between adjoining poems and within sections, where I had unproductive repetitions, where I could create stronger beginnings and endings and transitions, where I needed to tweak verb tenses, and so on.

I feel a little bit high on it, to be honest.

So rejections be damned: I'm going to send it out and then keep a close eye on it, to see what develops. Manuscripts are alive, I'm feeling, and respond to the touch, and reveal themselves over time.

Miscellaneous good things.

1. Friends who will counsel with you about technology (thanks Clint, Eric, and David!).
2. Losing track of time whilst making a project.

3. Receiving not one but two beautiful publications in the mail today:

4. A cool-ish, rainy-ish June so far.

5. Hearing from my folks that, up in Island Park, there was snow yesterday. Yes, snow.

6. Sorting out a new technical challenge in Final Cut Express.

7. Dinner with children on Sunday.

8. A delightful solitary Monday.

9. The library. What a brilliant concept.

New video!

Revision from lisab on Vimeo.

Craft Talk: Poetry, Revision & Research (in useful bullet points).

Today while revising my poem, I consulted

• thesaurus.com
• dictionary.com
• American Heritage's excellent list of Indo-European roots
• Marcus Aurelius
• Sappho
• Economy of the Unlost
• Eros the Bittersweet
• Ulysses
• the mythology of the Lotos-eaters, aka the lotosphagi
• a website about spiders

Also, I changed the title (from "little deaths" to the prosaic, and possibly Twilight-tinged, "Midnight."  Yes, it will likely change again.). Also, added a teeny epigraph (from the Lotos-eaters section of Ulysses).  

And now, I will watch some television.  And pet the dog.

Get a load of this.

Because Idaho is so beautiful (pronounce that with at least four syllables, please), today I was able to do a rough cut of my re-engineered manuscript, Hymn (2.0). And also to make jam.