go gently through the floor

I've been looking a lot at my book manuscript (alone, in my dark cold house, developing a hunchback and a distinctive facial tic probably). I think my work now seems old-fashioned to me. That is a word that many bad writers use when they're trying to secretly compliment themselves like oh, yes, I suppose my work calls back to Blake too much how embarrassing for me but I just mean "out of fashion." Poetic styles can change a lot, even in the two years since I've been seriously writing. A lot of the stuff I read and enjoy right now is this really casual,  playful, stripped-down, talky, prose-poems.

I can't do it. I like to think I'm offhand and fun enough, but it just doesn't  look all effortless cowboy poet when I do it. I do wish I'd learned how to fake this style in grad school, because when I try it, it's fun and quick.(See point 1: I can't do it.) But really, I think of all the times I tried to agonize two earnest little lines about a fucking historical tar swamp and seriously, I could just be doing this? I went through and put line breaks and random images into an entry I started this afternoon and here's how it turned out:

 
Yeah, still here. Headaches this week. You're right
to be pessimistic about the snow. I like to drink
out of Mason jars because it's what she
used to drink ice water when I was barely
old enough to walk. Four pennies on the top
of my white painted window sill. Headache gone
by now. You'd never guess what the cure was,
or maybe you would. This would be how I write
every day if I was more whatever. I hate to peel
shrimp so I go out of my way to do it, and this is called
masochism, this is called being the better man, this
is called the fine crack of winter light slotting through
the blinds. Eleven types of as-if. The new watchword is not.



I should submit it to all the sexy, fashionable mags. I'm going to be the new Queen of Everything.