Drought

A drought lifted for me today. I hadn't written a poem since the end of May. I could give excuses (living at a  summer camp for seven weeks does not conduct creativity; I never write as well or as much in the summer months; I've been spending most of my creative energy combing through the manuscript; yadda, yadda, yadda). Either way, it felt good to break rain. The poem I wrote today in a strip mall Starbucks is in terrible condition, but it exists, and for now that's enough.

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Brandon and I packed up our tiny life into tiny boxes and packed those boxes into a massive truck. We had ordered a 10' (which was much more space than we needed) and got a 16' instead. I've got an arm-out-the-truck sunburn. I've got acid reflux from eating too many granola bars. We've been making good progress across the country and have stopped in Oklahoma City for a few days, where it's been as hot as 117 degrees, a dust-bowl-breaking record. Southwest of the city, prairie fires have been sprawling out of control, aggrandized by the country-wide droughts. This fire, authorities believe, was started by an arsonist.

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On Monday, we head out again and will be in San Francisco by Wednesday to look for a place. The week after next, I'll be at Breadloaf. Then it's back to the Bay area, hopefully into our new place. Onward and onward.

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For someone who doesn't believe in writers' block, I think creative dry spells are acts of self-sabotage.

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I gutted the manuscript again. I've declared that I've done this, it seems, every other post on this blog. I'm into it's 24th reordering and there are still 2 or 3 poems I need to replace before I'll feel good about sending it out again, and this time I'm not sending it out until that happens. It's hard to know, though, when a poem is a good fit for a gap. It's been so much easier to write a large stack of poems and find a book inside that stack than it has been to write to fill in a hole. And my summer of not writing hasn't helped. Also, I don't write poems the way I did during my MFA, which I think, in general, is a good thing. The poem I wrote today won't go into the manuscript, and neither will the last three or four, but one day I will write one that will. I know it.

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I've been saying too many goodbyes lately: to my Madison family, to my Duke TIP family, to the place where Brandon lived this past year. I feel very divided, and a bit listless, during what should be an exciting time. It'll get better. The summer has been just too damned hot, and it seems everyone and everything is ready for this heat to break.