I feel like I'm stumbling about a bit.


When I started taking this poetry thing seriously, Plath was my only role model on how to do it properly [well, aside from the philandering husband and head-in-the-oven, of course]. I had her Journal for reference. There was no established internet when I started. If there were books on the topic, I couldn't've afforded them anyway. I was lucky to have found her book in the first place. Who tells you what an SASE means? Or ms.? Or how to write a cover letter? I didn't know many other poets. And how can one impose, anyway? You make your own way, I think, if you really want it badly enough, you make it happen.

Plath taught me heaps. She taught me the mechanics of writing, the dailiness, its struggles. From her I learnt persistence, doggedness, professionalism and being methodical. Yes, she bitched about being overlooked, she was all too human [I mean, she wrote about the pleasures of picking her nose! Something you won't catch me doing. I mean there's a limit, innit?] but she kept trying and she got there. I don't think I could've chosen better.

And I don't think I'm her. I'm not deluded or delusional. I am aspiring. Aspire, from Latin aspīrāre, to desire. It's not exactly ambition. Ambition implies an end goal, like wanting to be a CEO. Nor is it wanting to be famous. Surely there are easier ways to be famous than writing poetry.

I guess I'm here to push myself, to see how far I can go. So many people have encouraged me this far. I think there is still a little further to go. I don't like the idea of regret when it's in my power to do something about it. I think it's crap to be held back by other people's fears, by what they think is seemly or proper. And I won't be.

I'm going to go for it.


I'm working from outside of the spiral, circling inward. The closer I get to the center, the more lost I will be. Inside the vortex.

I don't want to go in. I'm struggling against it. It feels like it's too hard. This was the same thing in MacDowell. I feel like I have to give up too much.

Subsuming myself in all these people.


This series, this long poem, it's squeezing my brain. I keep dancing around the edges. But I must go in.


I think I'm getting closer though. 'The Coroner's Tale' is getting pretty close to the action. I need to work on his story more, then on to the next one.
- posted by Ivy @ 3:42 PM ¦ | ¦