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Prologue: Holding an Open House
I sing of the millennium, the most misspelled word of the millennium.
I sing of the four categories from which art is drawn:
ambition, love, religion, and death.
(This according to a former biologist, prone to classification, true, but a man who said, "The most beautiful part of my wife is the sear where her breast used to be." See? You believe him too).
Mrs. Daylater: Who, me?
Yes, you.
Mr. Daylater: I don't believe I do.
These are notes toward a poem without narrative structure, or structure only inferred though classification.
Mr. Daylater: This won't work, you know. We're enthralled by the linear. It's our destiny.
William Matthews, in his writing journal:
"How private is a journal if some entries get published? Who's this written for? What does it mean to sing in the shower? If a shower falls over on a desert island ...?"
Stephen Dunn: "The journal is offered in the spirit of someone open and vain enough to let you into his house. It's possible that a part of him always had you in mind."
Mr. Daylater: You got the vanity part all right.
Poem ideas:
a poem like Larry Rivers's "Double Portrait of Berdie," where preliminary sketches aren't painted over-the model has been tested in different positions.
a poem with cross-outs; everybody would read different words, different poems-a palimpsest
Mr. Daylater: Don't you use no fancy words, girl
Why can Bob Dylan record a song ten different ways, expanding and cutting it, changing the tempo and tone, poking fun at himself even, but a published poem is locked, historical? I think
Mr. Daylater: Using qualifiers like "I think" is a characteristic of female speech. You lack assertiveness, or want people to think you do.
Well--
Fillers are feminine, too.
a poem that rehabilitates the exclamation mark!
a poem with an analogue for the personal, a la Gluck's Meadowlands.
Mr. D: Remember how in speech class long ago you were told if you were nervous to imagine the audience members in their underwear?
SO?
Well that was only fair They're imagining you in yours.
stop it.
Mr. D: If your students read your poems, it's for gossip.
No & Im not listening
Mr. D: The...