Reading

Say this may speaking

Trying to get at the core of a phrase, not by expressing it exactly, perfectly…certainly there’s a perfection Kim is after though it’s not grammatical or institutional but rather elemental, emotional—perfection in exact expression, not duplication or imitation (ability to be duplicated, imitated), not the correctness of a phrase but that moment when you’re first becoming aware of what you’re trying to say before you've said it. of the space in which you attempt to understand something in multiple languages, even, before you can say it properly, before you could build such a phrase on your own. the moment of understanding before speaking, which can be a very long moment when you’re entering a new language. [or attempting to more fully inhabit one’s own body]

 

(Penury, Myung Mi Kim, page 11)

Reading

"I don't think that 'possible readers' are really the context in which poetry is written. For myself it's never been the case. If one plays to the gallery in that way, I think it's extraordinarily distracting. The whole performance of writing then becomes some sort of odd entertainment of persons one never meets and probably would be embarrassed to meet in any case. So I'm only interested in what I can articulate with the things given me as confrontation. I can't worry about what it costs me. I don't think any man writing can worry about what the act of writing costs him, even though at times he is very aware of it."

Still thinking about costs, motivations, interactions…

(from the Paris Review, "The Art of Poetry No. 10," an interview with Robert Creeley)

Reading

Thinking, more and more, about everything, as grad school and teaching approach me.

"The relationship needs to be protected from the notion of the outcomes." 

Or maybe just the libidinal terrible whatever.