Politicking Arts Day, NPW journal

4/27/1987

This time away from the real world has calmed me in a way that nothing else could. Easter was a bit much, overnight at my grandmother's at Forest Knolls, going to my aunt Canice's for Easter dinner in Petaluma, visiting Ken Larsen's parents in Novato, then going to San Francisco for the final National Poetry Week readings and party with Etheridge Knight. Then back to Novato, overnight at Herman Berlandt's, and then to Sacramento in the morning. A lot of couch surfing.

On Monday and Tuesday Ken and I did some heavy politicking for Arts Day at the state capital. I feel like one of those ancient ones, been in the game a long, long time. People are finally listening to me. It just takes time for the world to recognize and adjust to how you view yourself. Putting oneself out there has a lot to do with it. And for what? This this incredible resource pool I've developed, what do I want to be when I grow up? A good question for sure.

I got congratulations for all my CAC and artist and library grant, and I'm dreading the work. I'm dreading my CEIF grant, working with kids. The burnout has begun and I haven't even put the book together yet. The next two weeks will be incredibly intensive. Why, I've taken the past few days off, to be in slugabed city, just in order to survive.

Actually, it wasn't downtime. I revised several old poems on the computer. More like 50 poems. Oof. Of those 50 poems, a mere handful are even worth revising. The problem is that in my earlier work, I was moved by visual imagery, and the connections I made between my present emotional state of being, and nature were understated. The polar ice caps, volcanoes, and the ocean were my metaphor. I was developing my own mythos and my voice.

Poems that were a page and a half long, were edited down to seven or eight lines. I really learned something of the craft, I think. I hope. And it's never been obvious or anything I could even put my finger on and say aha. I understand. All of these summers at Napa Poetry Conferences, and especially with all my California arts Council grants, literally thousands of kids poems have that I've produced, have taught me the brevity of lines, if anything.

It's safe to say my first work is really awful and padded.

Kids really do write better than beginning adult writers, probably because they don't hate to write. What's missing in my early work is the engaged intellect, what I am, who I am, what is going on in my head, but the creative impulse is wailing away. More like flailing away.

Yes, the muses of my writing have abandoned me; I write less now, but before they were like cotton candy, all bulk and no substance, just sugar and water.

John says that I don't need his poetic critical advice on my work anymore, that I've learned it from him. We argue. I say I've learned very little from him as far as craft goes. He's not gone over very many of my poems. Ever.

Also, it's not something he likes to do. Therefore, to him, it all seems like he's done more than he actually has done. Because I'm in the middle of it all this trying to learn editing, I feel a little abandoned. I never quite got it right. And he's pulling out all the stops claiming turf. He claims he's taught me a lot poetically. And I'm not so certain.

When I wrote Falling to Sea Level, I had absolutely no help from John, everything was placed where I thought it should be, maybe I have learned it after all on my own. And I just don't trust it.

John is very facile at writing. I'm not. Perhaps that's why I never write in my poetry journal. It takes a crisis. Then it's more Dear Diary than poetry—and who wants to read that?

I've done about five or six watercolors in the past two weeks. I've gotten a show and a reading coming up on May 23, and I need more work – except instead of the tropics theme with watercolor crayons, the aquarelles, I'm deviating into straight watercolor and floral design elements. But I don't like most of it. So I've only got one new piece for the show after all that work.

I had planned to do several more pieces when I was in Baja, but since we didn't go, I have no new material. At this point I'm looking through my photographs for inspiration.

Out of the blue, last week, John decided we should break up, without telling me, so we held vacation plans in abeyance. He decided to go to the desert with his daughter and ex-wife. I'm enraged, but that isn't of much use. Jilted is more like it.

John gave me a writing  assignment. I find reasons not to write about it, but tonight my heart wants to burst, to weep all this sorrow into a saline river. So I make long lists. I have a fondness for semi semicolons; I like Philip Whalen's lists. He told me that he was mean to Gary Snyder when they were young; but now Gary's become a teacher. And Phil became a monk because of Gary; I tell Phillip I don't want to be a hermit. I like sex too much. He laughs. Ah, yes, the vagaries of circular writing.

John's more prone to black-and-white decisions. And I'm more ambiguous, knowing these things have their own rhythm ,and cannot be forced.  Like Whalen, I'm more of a Taoist in these matters, I think.

On the long solitary drive home from Fort Mason, the sorrow keeps bubbling up. So I distract myself with Spanish-language tapes. But it reminds me that I should be in Cabo with John. We would've been there yesterday, Ayer, entonces.