I am convinced there is a right time for things. you can read an important book, but if you read it when it does not speak to you, you will hardly remember it. if you read it when you are meant to read it, when you have been waiting to read it and when it has been waiting to be read by you, it will shatter everything.
I am feeling like that about poetry in my life right now. everything seems to have been coming together for this time in my life -- all the poetry books that somehow found their way to my shelves, the half-hearted research on submissions last summer, the names of poets I have hidden away in notes, the poems I have bookmarked and never gone back to. right now is feeling like the right time. all the words are making sense, together and apart, in ways they never did. all of a sudden I can hear the music in different forms, see the historical connections, understand literary movements that escaped me until now.
it's always amazing to look back and see change, to see how much growth there is still left to do. I'm applying for MFA in Creative Writing programmes by the end of this year, in poetry. there is so much! to do!
(so much of ourselves needs to be tailored for the world, narrowed or widened in order to fit better into some kind of model, so that somebody far away wants to pay us for what we do. none of it makes any sense, but we do it anyway. we navigate this strange world in the best ways we can. professor A. told me with so much love in his heart -- to not be afraid to live the life I must live, to be less guilty, to live less in my head, to live.)
an apology for the lack of poetry in this little pond for many months! it is all being pruned, and gathered, and shined. wish me luck for all the big things.