And here is the third post in my ongoing poetry mini interview.

Grace Paley guest-stars in this “very special” episode in which I wonder how I know when a poem is finished. Animated, in homage to The Sorcerer’s Apprentice.

Last, next.

75: Letterpress (Genghis Kern)
76: Kraft (graph)

The second installment in my five-part “poetry mini interview” has just been posted.

In this week’s exciting episode — groundbreaking in its use of CGI — I answer the question, “What poets changed the way you thought about writing?” Special appearance by the late John Engman in a flashback.

What if you asked me a question and I just asked another question in reply? Or a bunch of questions? Would you find it annoying? Why would I do something like that? To be clever and rhetorical, or coy and evasive?

Here is the genre-defying pilot, in which I say the word “accomplish” so many times it stops holding any meaning whatsoever: part one of my poetry mini interview.

I answer one question a week for the next five weeks.

Another just surfaced.

(Original series here, with subsequent discoveries here.)

The last time I was in a bookstore was 55 weeks ago. Since then, I’ve bought every book online, most from independent bookstores or, when I could, directly from the publisher. Only one bookstore has thought to include some bookmarks.

(Original series here, with subsequent discoveries here.)

Last, next.

74: Nat’l Parks (Rainier)
75: Letterpress (Genghis Kern)

The third series didn’t last. After an extremely promising first few days, I discovered the source text was problematic; I kept landing on passages that needed way too much massaging to render them usable. So I’ve settled on a different text and it’s been so much better. I even did five in one sitting the other day, just for kicks, which caught me up on the days I’d missed while looking for a new text.

I had to remind myself of a similar stumble before the second series, where I cast about for over two weeks, trying out three or four different source texts to see if they’d work. Something that looks like it’s going to be great can often present problems that make the chance operation more cumbersome or annoying than it’s worth.

Maybe I’ll talk about what I’ve found to be good and poor source texts some time.

Also, there’s something I’m trying to do differently this time. The poems in the earlier series each stood very much on their own. They all felt like they belonged together, of course, by virtue of the source texts setting the tone, so to speak; but they were each quite self-contained, at least to my ear. This time, I’m holding the idea that they are stanzas in a longer work.

Are they all by the same “speaker”? Are they parts of an ongoing dialogue of some kind? Not sure. If I continue my habit of not looking back at earlier days’ poems, then there won’t necessarily be any explicit through-line from one poem to the next any more than in the earlier series, since it will be yet another exquisite corpse, of sorts. But sometimes, simply “holding an idea” can be enough to alter the trajectory. We’ll see whether that’s true for this project or not.

I started my third chance operation series yesterday. As with the first two, I’m drawing five words at random from a predetermined list, then I’m using a source text to choose a line at random.

The first series ran for about forty days and the second for a bit over fifty days, which felt right for each of them. But I plan on running this series for at least three months, to generate as many as ninety or a hundred poems, from which I can select and winnow. This time, I want as many options as possible: I want the luxury to cut ruthlessly and still have something left over after the carnage.

I plan on doing it daily, but I did two today, so I’ve already written three. I also intend to not look back at the pieces until I’ve written at least 50 or 60, but I went back and copied out these first three poems since I had left them in something of a mess. And… something is happening. Something is clicking. I may even have a title for the project already.

Last, next.

73: Nat’l Parks (Denali)
74: Nat’l Parks (Rainier)