the only thing to fear is fear itself - and the spanish meatballs

- Liz

I also fear the beginning of school again. Granted, a little more structure than this weekend will be nice, but this amount of stress, forever, would also be nice. Mm. Seems like you just can't win. I feel like, if I can get a job as a professor, I'll have weekends and things where I don't have to go to work. And that would be nice.

And now, a short excerpt from my poetry homework reading:

"Why do I write? Why do I write? Why do any of us write or make art? Why not make something practical instead like a chair or some money? Why not make something edible that disappears and, if bad, can be easily forgotten, or if good, can live on in memory screened from damaging changes of context? The question is: How does one hold an apple/who likes apples? Is the question about intentionality? Is the answer to such a question to be trusted? Would it be better to continue speculating? By better are we talking about being more interesting or more productive? Should this answer be a record of something that has already happened, or should it be prescriptive and affect poems that have yet to be written? Can there be an experiment without a hypothesis? Is language poetry scientific? Is lyric spiritual? If a poem was written in the tradition of the avant-garde but is then absorbed by the mainstream, what is it? Is a poem less valuable if it appeals to a large audience? Can a poem be committed to the lyric tradition, even if the poet is not? Is lyric committed to beauty? Is there such a thing as beauty? Where does it reside?"

The whole statement is like that, but it's delicious. I mean, intellectually I knew that other people must ask tons of questions (some of them unanswerable) as they work, or of their work, but here's a bit of empirical, published proof. I dunno. I just got excited. = )