writing books

For some reason I thought I was could just assemble a motley crew of poems into a book and send it out. I'm a little lazy. That's not how you write books. I'm almost certain of it. And besides, the bushel of poems are struggling to figure out how they know each other.

"Were you written by the same person who wrote me?"
"Maybe, is she the same one who was obsessed with Sartre two years ago?"
"I'm not sure about all that, my author was on a big squirrel kick."

This is to say, most of these poems lack cohesion. A certain over-arching theme to bring them together. And then there's that whole statement of purpose you send a prospective editor. I don't have one of those either. I have no statement that clearly says what this gaggle of poems represents or who the lunatic who wrote them is.

My husband came up with a terrifying idea. "Why don't you fill in this collection with new poems? That should tie them together somehow."

You want me to write more?? You want me to actually work at this? And that's when I got down to the root of the problem. I was stuck in a corner and I wasn't prepared to write my way out. I thought it would be easier than this.

This is what happens when you haven't created in months. You feel bloated with medieval humors; lackluster, dull and frustrated. I've been suffering from the malaise of "not creating." Let's mix more medical metaphors: Assembling a chapbook was supposed to be the band-aid covering a gushing head wound!

When it didn't work, when I became light-headed from the blood lost, I had to return to the drawing board. I read three books. Four chapters of a terrible paperback romance, two essays out of a sexual identity book, and about six poems from an anthology.

Reading. Who knew that was the trick? I'm being ironic, of course. I know that to become a decent writer, you must get out of your own head and into a book.

The very act of reading produced two poems today. This effort must be done, much to my chagrin. My husband reminded me that there are no short cuts in creating. I have to remind myself that although I am the deity over my own work, I'm not necessarily God. I cannot create a chapbook in seven days.