Loose ends

I felt good about my book of poems when it was published. Naturally I hoped it would get some attention. But things didn't start out well. The Oregonian wouldn't review it, for reasons I don't understand. Wordstock wouldn't add me to their list of dozens and dozens of writers who read there, for reasons I don't understand. Given my contribution to Portland letters over the past 30+ years, I took both as a Great Insult. I still do. You heard about Scorpios and grudges. So there was the book, ignored and dangling loose ends.

Bob Hicks to the rescue! Hicks appreciated the book and took the time to say so. And he's so smart and writes so well, his piece on it was a delight to read and he totally got the book. You can't ask for more than that. Dangling loose ends tied into a neat bow and nothing else has to happen.

As a matter of fact, I'm feeling like nothing else has to happen to me at all in the public arena. The book of poems is a kind of public literary swan song, and the short novel I'm working on is a kind of private literary swan song, and that's that. I hope to turn to animated art songs after the novel is done. A new direction. A new challenge. I think I've said about all I have to say in the traditional literary forms, and in the short novel I'm making a final statement by fooling around with the form itself. Nobody will dig it -- correction, a few may well dig it but they'll all live in Europe.

So it's not like I'm packing up or even retiring. I'm just "done" as a "writer" the way I've been writing. Half a century is long enough. Animated art songs are calling for my attention.

I'm glad I'm not younger. But if I were, I think I'd use my design for a hyperdrama theater and see if I could actually pull it off. Interestingly enough, on the world stage, my reputation in hyperdrama is greater than in anything else. They really should have given me a McArthur Fellowship for my Chekhov Hyperdrama, you know. I'm serious. Nothing wrong with my ego. But, of course, first someone would have to know about it, and as far as I know all of its fans, every single one, are in Europe and mainly in Scandinavia (where it's even used in a couple of grad theses.)  I wish the design for a hyperdrama theater hadn't come to me so late in life. (I talk about the design at the end of this video.)

But hey, what a wild blessed writer's life I've had! And this convoluted thing I'm working on now may, privately, be the wildest, most fun thing yet. So I'm far from done. Just done, or feeling done, in the PUBLIC arena, and that's quite all right. I've had a hell of a lot more good press over the years than most writers. It's just that here and now, nobody respects their elders ha ha.

Well, they'll be old soon enough. Nature always wins. Nature always gets the last laugh.