Charles Jensen | Writer

I’ve written about 10,000 times on this blog that I always know when it’s time to write again because I start asking questions about what a poem is and what it’s supposed to do.

(It’s happening to me again.)

It makes me a fussy reader, first. I’ll try to read some things, but I’ll become easily frustrated if it seems like something I’ve encountered before, if the poem isn’t challenging or surprising me or if the voice is uninteresting.

Lately, I’ve been frustrated work that appears too autobiographical–in the sense that the poet seems to be recounting unmediated experiences from his or her real life.

Which is fine. I’m not here to tell anyone what they should or shouldn’t write, or hot to do it or not. It’s not my business. I’m just not interesting in doing that myself anymore. I want to do something else, somehow else.

I started doing a little research on something yesterday and it gave me goosebumps, made the hair on my arms stand up, so I’m going to move toward it, immerse myself in it, and see where it goes.

It’s tangential to the voice projects I have been working on, which seemed limited only to Dorothy Gale and Dorothy Eady, but that was fine, that was enough.

I’m like Madonna that way. I want complete reinvention every two years.