Procrastinating

I should be cleaning, or grading, or working on my manuscript, but instead, here I am. Surprise.

Sometimes, I wonder what it would be like to have a life where I actually take weekends off. Even when I was working a normal (9-5) job, I was always taking classes. Okay, I know I'm spoiled. I just took half the summer off. And the whole summer before that. But I was in school mode the whole time, writing & reading close to 40 hours a week. Does anyone get to just go home from work and relax anymore?

I think I'm going to order a pizza today. For some reason, I feel guilty about it.

I wrote a poem last night. It wasn't like my usual stuff, but I'm not sure if that's a good thing or a bad thing.

I have a meeting with VO on Monday. To talk about my memoir proposal. Don't tell Mary. I wonder what Wasserman would say about me writing non-fiction. Better or worse than poetry? Maybe I'll start working on that romance novel just to get him off my back.

To prose or not to prose

I'm working on this poem that I want to be a prose poem, but I think it's asking for line breaks. I'm kind of sad about it. Maybe I'm just not meant to write prose poems. Or maybe I just don't understand what a prose poem is. I've been reading and rereading Simone's "Orange Girls" and Mary's "Milfoil & Afterthought." I need to find some more. It seems like they (prose poems) are everywhere until I'm actually wanting to read them, and then I can't find them anywhere.

Also, I'm struggling with the lies...I mean, the fictionalizing of personal experience. Trying to not be tied to "but that's how it happened." In this particular poem/story/memory, the truth of it is as bizarre as anything I could make up, but I still don't want to get stuck in reality or chronology, yet when I throw in something purely fictional, I feel like it doesn't fit. I wonder if I will ever be able to break away from "truth" in my poems.