Dear Aeschylus,
I wrote this letter before, but thought better of it.
Anyway, I'd thought it was pretty obvious that I'm the snottish type who doesn't think demons should just get pulled out of you & put down onto pages in thin little columns. (Do you know about Davis McCombs? He is from Kentucky, one county away from where I grew up, & he writes these fantastic poems about the caves there. His wife is a science teacher. I read an interview & in it he said that his career & his wife's are different in that everybody thinks anyone can write poems but only special, gifted people can do science.)
Demons aside, you ask me to pick what is dangerous: my poems v my diaries. But oh, don't you see, all I want is to be able to see something & then to give it back to someone I love! Think of the camera in the skull. Think of me at Kenyon with my hands hovering over the machines in the editing suites. Think of me standing in the KC trembling because I was asked to read out loud & couldn't resist that weird rock-star poet image. Think of me shutting my eyes, quivering, in Caples, in Farr, behind Sunset, because I just couldn't take it all in anymore.
Think of the flower in the graveyard, & the candy we ate. My eyes hurt & my wrists hurt. Think of how fast my words come out of my mouth when you get me going.
Here is something I said before but I still think it is right: I want for my poems the same things I want for my diary: I just want to write down what I see, I just want it to be spot-on. I want to be Ni Zan! I want to make flagrantly obscure art-historical references & I want no one to begrudge me their flagrant obscurity.
This used to be all about C�zanne & my desire to be C�zanne.
I can't think of anything else to say about it, sorry.
lovericka
PS: Do you know what it means, the orange? I am holding it out to you. Do you know what I am trying to say/
