I need to focus and spend a minute (by which I mean a WHILE) focusing on the confessional poetry aspect of this. I need to write about the connections (and misconnections) I have and haven't been making. I'm starting to fear that this project has a too-sprawling focus.
I've decided that I want to look at the blues a little bit, even if just for experience sake. Tonight I'm going to download some Bessie Smith and Ma Rainey, and I want to look at The Gossip's Beth Ditto's performance in the context of a blues tradition. I need to read more by/about Ditto and delve more into The Gossip's music.
I wish I could somehow make Meredith Monk magically more confessional so I could talk more in terms of modern- era art music that at least brushes shoulders with the acceptable (somewhat oppressive) art music canon, but unless I can get my hands on a recording of Education of the Girlchild (or whatever the title is?), this idea is pretty doomed.
As for poetry...feeling indecisive. I want to look at someone fresh-- I like Jillian Weise, her poetry is exactly what I'm looking for and there's an essay in one of Mattilda's books (Nobody's...crap. the one that's anti-assimilation...) that I could relate it to, somehow. Part of me feels like I need to google "queer poets now" and see what comes up in terms of first published books or chapbooks or crazy dykes doing readings in basements.
I wrote a poem tonight about being sick of writing sex poems but not really thinking flowers could be as subversive. Maybe I'm not giving flowers enough credit.
Basically, I have a busy three weeks or so ahead of me, and in the great words of Apollinaire, "je ne veux pas travailler; je veux fumer..." or a similar sentiment. Though I'm starting to feel really one with my project again, which is a fantastic feeling. I just need to make it as important as yoga or cleaning out my humidifier every three days.
Oh, back to thinking about the canon and art music and what not: ETHEL SMYTH. Need to read more about her correspondence with Virginia Woolf, all of the work Elizabeth Wood has done on her music. And holy crap, her Mass in D is giving me MAJOR goosebumps....
With faith this will all come together, somehow. And I am oozing faith...
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