Will I submit work to the contest? If yes I need do it by this coming Sunday, here are my last seven days: Thursday March 9 - definitely no / Friday March 10 - no, probably / Saturday March 11- no, no, no / Sunday March 12 - yes, maybe / Monday March 13 - definitely yes / Tuesday March 14 - not on my fucking life / Wednesday March 15 - why don't I burn all of these motherfucking doodles / today - I did promise L I would but I've broken promises before, yes? My daughter turns thirty Wednesday next week, this is side two of the card I made her.
9.5 x 10, ballpoint ink, gouache, sharpies. Other side you won't be shown, much less submitted to the contest, the side with words in color to my daughter. It's been a few years since I typed this here, in my head each post IS a poem
A major issue: while I like my recent paintings (while acknowledging their amateurishness) I don't like what I'm writing when I force myself to write and idiot that I am I think I can't use poems I wrote that I like but were written before I knew of this contest, I'm convinced my strict adherence to rules I make to constrain my creativity is the portal to my dark, the painting below done recently, the words from a 2013 notebook, repurposed from a stanza of haiku, I know the judges at the contest don't care when I wrote it but I do and won't submit it, at least at this second in timeline
THIS ROOM
John Ashbery
The room I entered was a dream of this room.
Surely all these feet on the sofa were mine.
The oval portrait
of a dog was me at an early age.
Something shimmers, something is hushed up.
We had macaroni for lunch every day
except Sunday, when a small quail was induced
to be served to us. Why do I tell you these things?
You are not even here.
in other news:
ReplyDeleteThe return of the record! Vinyls outsell CDs for the first time in 35 YEARS following a surge in popularity for retro gadgets
Just over 41 million records were sold in the US last year, compared to 33 million CDs, according to a report from the Recording Industry Association of America.
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-11857543/Vinyls-outsell-CDs-time-35-YEARS-following-surge-popularity-retro-gadgets.html
It's a beautiful card. A friend lives in another state; we write letters, on paper, with fountain pens. I add illuminations to mine. I also make envelopes for them, with facsimile stamps commemorating odd events or things ("1690: The American Blunderbuss"), or Airship Postage, or exhorting the American worker to Buy More Bonds. They respond with their own. We do use actual postage, too, so we can't be accused of mail fraud and dragged off in the middle of the night, thrown on a plane and taken to Florida, then driven in the dark and left outside More-Lego with a small packet of M&Ms and a voucher for a free small soda. Actually, I haven't taken a vacation in some time, so this might be just what I need.
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