09-09-2012, 08:29 AM
I don't like the word envy either. I'm jealous of things though. I wrote a book of letters to my daughter, though I don't have a daughter, because it made me feel happy and sad, and increased the longing for something like that in my life. And I think about it, and in a way it's a book of love poetry to a woman (that does exist, thankfully, kind of thankfully), though I've never let her read it. Not that I wouldn't let her read it, it's just that so far she's never found it. And with personal poems like that, and some of the other things I write, I try to see how much I can get away with before it makes the poem unreadable. I don't do that as often in prose. And with the Lethe poem, Chico playing cards with Satan has a nice ring to it too, but there's that balancing act of fragmented comedy and not wanting the reader to feel so familiar with what might be shades in the Underworld. They were all musicians, so you're right. I like poems that make me angry as much as poems that make me sad or sentimental. I love poetry, but poetry doesn't make me happy. Women make me happy, and trees, and dirt roads, and old buildings in old cities. When I'm away from those, I write books. And sometimes I try to make people angry, so they'll write the angry poetry that blows things up in my mind. I like cooking too, but I don't have any money right now, so I only fry bananas, and boil cheap noodles.