October 17: is it really halfway?

Hard to believe I’ve been here for three weeks already– the days are flying by, and sometimes I worry that in the time I have remaining, the blend of reading, writing, and exploring that I’m pursuing won’t cover every single inch of ground. But the converse is in fact true: the more time you spend in the forest, you understand that the more you look closely at one particular inch of ground, you see all sorts of fascinating connections between it and all the others, and so come to a more complete understanding of the landscape. An old realization, to be sure; William Blake wrote of seeing “a world in a grain of sand, / and a heaven in a wild flower.” But all the better when it comes around again to surprise you.

To mark the halfway point, today, over lunch, we all sat down for a miniature reading and progress report, and I couldn’t be more grateful for what came out of it. The book I’m working on while I’m here, a new collection of poetry about the bottomland hardwood forest, has felt at times a little scattered, as random as the leaf litter on the forest floor, and the chance to bring it together for an audience, even if in provisional form, was more than welcome. Pardon the cliche, but being in the middle of a book is not unlike being in the middle of a forest, in that maps aren’t readily provided — often, you have to make your own. Hard to see it when you’re in it; the only thing to do is keep going through.

No doubt the collection will continue to take shape over the next few weeks, of that I’m sure, but it was great to get this feedback so early on. We’re planning a fuller reading sometime next month (back in town, probably at the New Orleans Public Library, and with other poets from the Studio), and will post those details soon. But for now, it’s back to work– pen, notebook, and machete in hand.