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© Paul Zarzyski. All rights reserved. These words may not be reprinted or reposted without the author's written permission.
NEWSFLASH: A Proclamation, a Preview
The 2007 tsunami of distractions from the pure focus in which I do what it is I LIVE TO DO—write poetry in beautiful bountiful solitude with my dancehall gal Muse dressed erotic in red and black—struck on April 11th. I’m counting on my fingers: May, June, July, August, September, October, November. Seven months later, I’m close, finally, to transcribing, from notebook to first typed revision, a draft of a poem that I believe has better-than-even odds of making it. I’ll say it again—seven purt-near poetryless months—as I cringe with disgust, with disappointment, with despair and desperation in light of this admission in print, this admission not so much to you as to myself, and, moreover, to my beloved Muse. (Bless me Babe for I have sinned.)
Gigs, work, business, chores, correspondence, obligations, family, friends, acquaintances, upkeep, keep up, demands, requests, expectations, relationships, sunken ships—LIFE’S MAINTENANCE!—offer little solace and not a single scintilla of sympathy, of excuse, for the 7-month self-induced absence from the artistic fixes that make me tick.
Prior to April 11th, I had tallied 58 days of creative journeys into the unknown over a 63-day span beginning on February 7th. I figured we—my Muse and I—might coast for a skosh after a wild run like that, but NOT 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7 friggin’ months.
(For your penance (and joy!), Paul, you’ll disregard the upcoming holidays with all their commercial chaos and nonreciprocal Christmas card guilt, in lieu of which you’ll try not only to save your soul, but our soulfulness.)
What I did, in the midst of writing fresh works and revising old drafts, back in February, March, and April, was choreograph a 69-poem, plus one song lyric, manuscript tentatively titled ROADWORK IN THE BONEYARD. The prospective book is in dire need of hundreds of hours of revision. Its 8 (yes, my favorite number) roughed-out sections are extremely flawed, I’m convinced, for reasons I won’t discover until the poems become more and more the physiological components of my makeup, alongside the emotional/philosophical/intellectual/spiritual components. In any case, what’s immediately obvious is the number of ars poetic focuses contaminating the stew, as if the perforated lid of the cumin shaker popped loose with the first thrust over the pot. A pinch of ars poetica goes a long LONG way. I write them almost always after a dry spell. In fact, I had to pry myself away from the topic these past weeks while struggling for that first poem after my 7-month bardicless incarceration. Simply, the ‘script needs winnowing and bolstering, both. And in 2008, I vow, I resolve, to shoulder into it with daily, weekly, monthly, yearly creative vehemence—po-bizz, domesticity, life’s maintenance, and, especially the exponential guilt, which will
most certainly result from my ignoring the aforementioned, be damned.
In the coming months, we’ll post works-in-progress; some will make the ultimate cut, some will not, and others will likely remain forever on the cusp, in poetic purgatory. Why not kick things off with an ars poetica piece—admittedly one of my favorites—which I wrote in the fall of 2006, after another long dry spell, but NOT, thank goodness, a seven monther.
