Charles Jensen | Writer

I think I know what direction to head in for my next project, and in thinking about it, I realize I already have several finished/published poems that I can fold into it.

But, we’ll see.

I went shopping for books yesterday as a sort of end-of-holiday treat, and I couldn’t help feeling that 90% of the books I pulled off the shelf were just too much like each other, too much like what I’ve already read. It was disheartening because I know that I’m not being as innovative as I’d like to be (and, true, I’m not even sure what it would mean for me to be truly innovative).

I’m trying to figure out how to do it differently. I know I resist the narrated-experience poem I perceive as being a hallmark of white male writing (“I went out into the world / and found there an experience / that made me reflect on the world / as something I recently discovered”) and I resist the non-signifying language of LangPo, but I am interested in an intersection of those traditions. Language that pops with surprises, but that (to me) still somehow emotes. I’m moving more toward spareness in my poems, too, although I’m nowhere near the spare beauty of, say, Joseph Massey.

And, okay, I actually have a couple of ideas that I’d like to explore, now that I think about it. Something about rooms. A cinematic manuscript. Maybe I’d like to do something less serial than my new ms, or something thematically linked in a series of short sections.

I wish I could do a little of everything.