I am awed by people who have such certainty

"But I hope I have done enough to suggest that you approach your writing not only as if it were a performance but also as if it constituted, for the moment, an ethically adequate object for your deepest ambition."

"Writing as Performance
Revealing 'the calculation that underlies the appearance of effortlessness'"

Stephen Greenblatt

Daily Rituals

http://www.sunstar.com.ph/weekend/09-22-2007/dog%20ears.html

Can Xue

I've been reading the stories of this Chinese woman writer. Can Xue. You might want to check her out. Funny, and fun, and strange. And finally, finally, I've figured out (after all these years!), the true heart of fiction, which is the dire need to imagine, and to escape.

A while

While at the heart of many poems is a voice, individual, specific, that speaks, or sings,
I'm thinking of a poem whose core is built around not face, or mouth, but cell.
Ring. Two spirals built around the idea of whatever it is the body must be made of.
A construction of a world. That did not begin with a word.
That did not begin, at least, with an "I". But constructed it.
I used to think to have a heart attack was to be shot in the heart by a stranger.
A hooded figure, whose face was unseen, but whose shape we remembered.
Another nightmare: in the park, two men, and my mother.
And my inability to protect her. Hiding while they take her away.
It is a terrible thing to wake up one day with an ache.
I have suddenly discovered what it is, that will make me happy.
And I believe in it.