THE SHAPE OF BLOGS TO COME

i've been writing poems pretty hard for awhile now, going hard at poems

i mean, i've been going hard at poems for years now, but the last yearish has been unprecedented for me

i've written about this before but i always wanted to have so many poems, that i would have an infinite pile of poems to reach into and work on/with/from

& now, i basically have an infinite pile of poems

this isn't about that, though

i'm taking a break from writing new poems at a feverish rate

my poem writing is going to be limited to collabos w/ amanda and cutlass

i would also sort of like to start collaboing w/ mikey more irl while we are living together

i guess i'm open to almost any collabo writing, and doing that feverishly, so if you want to collabo, get at me, if you know me personally that should be easy, but if you don't, you can email me at paul [dot] hanson [dot] clark [at] gmail [dot] com, and i assure you, i will respond

anyways, aside from that, i am less interested in being a feverish creator of poems, when it comes to the stuff i am working on in solitude

in lieu of being a feverish creator of poems, i have a few other things going on that are different for me, which is frightening

the first thing is, over the course of several years of my life, i periodically talked into this audio recording device to, i guess, 'get things off my chest'

i'm currently in the process of typing up these recordings, there are roughly 300 of them, and using that as, or as the basis for, a prose manuscript

these recordings are extremely personal, and i guess were made during the most unhealthy period of my life, and i really have no idea what this thing that emerges from them will look like, other than i know that anyone who wants to know me much better will be able to read this thing and know me much better, including/especially all of the people who already know me best, i'm not sure if this thing will be worth reading if you don't know me, which is frightening

right now i would say that this thing will largely be about 'memory', but i don't know if it will actually turn out that way

so that's one thing i am going to be focusing on in lieu of being a feverish creator of poems

now i'm not sure how to type about the other thing without typing about it in a way that makes me feel stupid, but i guess that's the fear kicking in, so i'll just try not to worry about the way that i'm typing

basically, i have four 'manuscripts' that i am working on that i hope to have done in the next 4-6 months

for some reason, i just don't like thinking of the shit i write as a 'manuscript' but that's probably just some issue that i have

or maybe it's just i don't like using the word manuscript

but anyways, here are the 4 things

everything i learned was a surprise - a collection of 100 'individual' poems, this will mostly be a selection of some of my favorite poems that i've written that aren't part of 'something bigger', it may end up being less than 100, maybe 50 or 75, or even 30, i'm not really sure, i might also consider poetic diversity when compiling this, also i may include some of what i consider to be 'juvenilia', i would like to make it 100 poems, i've written around 600 'individual' poems and i think 1/6 seems like a good enough wheat/chaff ratio, but i really have no idea

can't you just be a kid who tore the shell off a turtle without realizing it's spine was connected? - this is a massive group of poems that i wrote to enter into the ahsahta chapbook contest, i've posted some on this blog, anyways i want to continue working on them as a group until they achieve what i want them to achieve, which is i want the poems, when taken as a whole, to create a small change within the reader, i want the poems to make the reader feel compelled to consume less, which may be crazy, but whatever

the fake god - this is an 'epic poem' i wrote roughly during the time that annette was no longer living in omaha but we were still dating, it is approximately 27,000 words long, most of the people i have shared it with have reacted positively to some extent, also when i've read parts of it out loud to people they react positively as well, i am really looking forward to editing this and making it very 'lean', that is my only goal for this, i think it's pretty successful as is, unedited, but i am interested in making it 'lean', i guess i'm going to employ the same editing process that i employ with a 'normal' poem, but i think the process is inevitably going to be very different in ways i can't possibly predict when applied to an 'epic poem'

kidney lust - for awhile now me and amanda have been writing poems with the working title of 'kidney lust', additionally we have been writing collaborative poems together, though not as much, that do not fall directly under the 'kidney lust' tree, and we now have a collaborative writing schedule that i have already failed at following religiously but hope to follow religiously for the next several months, and from there i hope to create a grouping of rad collaborative poems under the title 'kidney lust', that will include many poems called 'kidney lust', many poems not called 'kidney lust' but that were written with the working title of 'kidney lust', and also poems that have nothing to do with 'kidney lust' other than they were written by me and amanda

after each of these things reaches 'completion' i will attempt to create some sort of cool/fancy pdf that i can then email to people i love/admire, and have some links to them somewhere so that anyone can download any of these things at any point in time

obviously i will certainly do this with the first three, with the 'kidney lust' thing i'll have to discuss the particulars with amanda some more, and that's a down the road sort of convo

there are a few reasons i want to do this

one is that i think this will be good in making my poetry available/accessible to a larger number of people, and i am very much interested in making my work available/accessible to a larger number of people

like, right now a very large portion of what i've written is 'available' to be read on this blog, but i know that the vast majority of people have no interest in reading 500 poems on a blog, or even 50 poems on a blog, so having my poems 'only' available in the context of this blog seems like a 'mistake', or something, if i want to make my writing available/accessible to a larger number of people, which i do

the other main reason i want to do this is to be 'done' with all of these poems, what i mean is, i feel like these poems should no longer be in the back of my mind when i begin again to feverishly create new poems, and, currently, and this is an exaggeration, but not a huge exaggeration: currently every poem i have ever written is always in the back of my mind

this project i have just lined out, when taken as a whole, is very different for me, ever since i started writing seriously my entire project, or focus, or whatever you want to call it, has simply been to create as many poems as possible, this is in some ways antithetical to that, and i feel as though i am temporarily abandoning something that i love, and that frightens me

all this brings me to the shape of blogs to come

for the foreseeable future i am going to use new posts on this blog to write things that are more essayistic

i think i will continue writing 'comments poems' whenever that urge strikes me, which isn't often, but definitely isn't never

i believe the next blog post i write will be about the movies 'wanderlust' and 'this means war', both of which i saw recently

i am interested in writing in an essayistic style because it is very important to me as a human that i am writing, but since i am taking a break from being a feverish creator of poems, i have to find something to fill that void, and the two projects i outlined above are largely editorial, some aspects even being largely tedious, and i need to be doing something that is generative, or else i am a fucking idiot, i would feel like a fucking idiot if i wasn't writing new stuff for most of 2k12, but i want to at least attempt to remain committed to this no longer being a feverish creator of poems idea, so writing in a way that is essayistic seems like a way to be generative while remaining committed to no longer being a feverish creator of poems

i have high hopes for the remainder of 2k12, i feel more committed to writing than ever, but i feel like this year is going to be a transition year for me, which, again, is very frightening

anyone who has actually read this entire post, and who has thoughts to share, please share them via commenting on this post or contacting me via email or phone, or facebook, or whatever, or twitter