Spent some time today and yesterday arranging stacks of paper on my studio floor. The cat loves this. When sleepy he can flop on whatever pile I'm paying attention too. When awake, he can scatter papers like pigeons. He seems to enjoy the stalk-quiver-dash-kill. I hardly have the heart to lock him in the basement.
I've been trying for about six months to find a shape for the book I sometimes call Weird Catholic Stuff, which I thought might include Biblical voice poems like "Leah Names her Sons"and "After the Flood"; secular (mostly) voice poems of the Lives of the Saints collection; Biblical devotionals like "Book of Wisdom", and the long sequence Too Strong to Stop, Too Sweet to Lose, which I've talked about soo much recently.
Today I came to the conclusion that Too Strong ought to lead a book of its own. I'm not sure if it's the only thing in the book -- poems like "Suffrage to Water"seem to be of a piece -- but I don't think it shares much with the Biblical poems, or with "Lives of the Saints."
Beyond, that is, that I always write about memory, forgetfulness, regret, and redemption. Not on purpose, either. It just seems to work out that way. My favourite poems are all elegies.
Heck, everything I write seems to be an elegy. Why's that, do you suppose?
(and would Everything's an Elegy make a good title for a combined Biblical Voice and Lives of the Saints book?)
(and why does it take me so long to figure out stuff this basic?)
