hello. i’d tell you that a lot’s been going on but i don’t really believe that. i think i kind of wane during this season in a big way and as a result all i’ve been doing is walking around a bit and getting by in classes and reading when i can, trying to watch films, etc. i haven’t written a column for Delphian Inc. in awhile nor have i written any new pieces for htmlgiant, which is a bummer but i guess i’ll get over it. i’ve written some poems. the poetry collection comes out from black coffee press in april which is cool. i’ve tried to put together another slim collection and i’m hoping to find somebody willing to put it out. i never had much confidence in poetry because i never felt interested in actually ‘studying it,’ rather just writing it late at night when i knew nothing like prose was going to happen. lately, however, i’ve grown fond for several contemporary poets (notably ariana reines and m. kitchell) and have reread some favorites from the past (notably cp cavafy and ezra pound) and tried to recalibrate my views because every time i sit at the computer or notebook to scribble something down it winds up being far more vertical in focus than horizontal, indicating something more like poetry than prose. and frankly, i’ve never much liked the idea of studying the canon of literature as related to prose, so not being extremely well-versed (ha ha) in poetic forms doesn’t matter all that much to me. i’ve found a great deal more people willing to look at my stuff and publish it if it’s terse and expressive and typically it’s poetry rather than stories. i still have these novels sitting around and collecting dust and i wonder what will someday happen to them. one i’m pretty sure will be published if i ever take the initiative to send it out with half the energy i sent out the persistence of crows but it’s difficult to explain how fundamentally jarring that whole experience is, and hence my perception of how it would be with this book. my hope is to focus on smaller things for now, poems and short fiction, nonfiction, etc., until i can simply sit with somebody and say here’s a fucking pile of work that nobody’s seen that isn’t half bad what the fuck do you want to do with it. and that’ll be that. that’s probably a more common dream than i realize. you work and work and work at something and suddenly when you start to breath through it all in any way you realize people are paying attention to stuff you never even thought was interesting yourself or that you wrote such a long time ago it doesn’t even make sense to you anymore; and yet you can’t be bitter. i don’t know. i try not to be. i try to trust in the person i was when i wrote those things, and trust that forward movement will eventually lead me to a place where all this speculation and fear can just be fodder for another memoir, or whatever. i’m diabetic. i don’t often write about that or tell people about it because i don’t know how interesting it really is, but it is a fact of my existence and i guess it’s probably worthwhile to tell people about it. i’m reading oliver sacks right now, and his commingling of the arts and medicine, i guess, has me ready to accept that there is some significance behind this ailment even if i don’t constantly feel like blogging about bloodsugars or whatever. that would be boring. i’m aware of that. and yet i do face things that aren’t faced by all people every day, which might be interesting. i don’t know. i think i chose when i became diabetic that i wasn’t going to see it as a reason to pity myself and even though i went through a brief teenage period of denial where i’d let my bloodsugars go haywire i eventually came to terms with the fact and that was that. it’s weird. mostly it makes me realize i can’t be homeless and i can’t just run away from everything. that part of it always kind of sucked. i liked the idea of just living on my own someplace sunny for awhile and sleeping on the beach. but i can’t do that. i’ve always been at peace with the idea of teaching to make ends meet as a result of this as well. writers often gripe about things like this and i understand it completely because i hate all my fellow classmates and would likely hate them even more if i were standing in front of them attempting to talk about things i don’t even fully understand yet, and still there’s an element of romance to it. i’m thinking of berryman and bellow in minneapolis, or roth in chicago, or john cage in chicago, these were artists and writers who were imbued with a sense of purpose as a result of working in academia. most of them left after awhile, but all the same there’s such an anachronistic edge to colleges in this world that gives one the illusion s/he might be walking on the same ground as freud or wittgenstein or whomever when heading to an office or a class, etc. i am prepared to work a great deal more in academia to achieve these goals, however, having written so much at such an early age with a terrific amount of anger and frustration involved, i do hope to be even remotely accepted as someone who can not only talk about all this shit, but who bears printing on occasion in actual books. christ, that’s the most antiquated line i’ve ever written.

i’m going to leave now and read some more of the mind’s eye by oliver sacks. afterward i think i’ll watch if, starring malcolm mcdowell, then knife in the water by polanski, then something by bresson whose title currently eludes me, i want to say mouchette…

thanks for reading.

if you’d like to order my first poetry collection you can do so here: ODE TO A VINCENT GALLO NIGHTINGALE PREORDER

and to view the free chapbook i made with the artist kil, go here: POOR ME I HATE ME PUNISH ME COME TO MY FUNERAL

-grm