The second week of school and so far so good! Having a few years under your belt at the same school is a huge advantage. Not only are the students a little more familiar with your expectations and teaching style, but your lesson plans are less hectic as they have already had the run of mill for the past years.
I have sent out my manuscript of Crossing Back, The Other Guey, to a few close friends that I think will give me honest feedback. I plan to do one more major sweep of revisions in late Sept. and then I plan to send them out to small publishers and maybe even some contest. Who knows how people will react to these poems, could be very reward but also very embarrassing. Well, it doesn't matter, I have always been a person that has put themselves out there. What you see is what you get and most of the time I'm pretty good about accepting rejection. I have been reading a lot though, which makes me happy and optimistic to challenge myself in that direction.
I have also been taking a break from writing poetry, well maybe not so much, but a different kind of poetry. I've had this story in my heart and brain that I've wanted to put on paper for about a year now. I would love the title to be: The Papaya Plot. Don't know why, because I really don't even like the way papaya taste, but I do love the way it sounds. I have also found out some pretty interesting things on the papaya. For instance, some tribes in South America, have been known to use the papaya as a contraceptive. From what I have read, there must be some chemical within the fruit that does something to the reproductive organs. Of course, this could make for a great reference/twist to this project.
The gist of the project (I can't give away all the details) is the story of how two families in Nicaragua come together. One family, a family of farmers and the other family, a family of artist/politicians. While under the circumstance of the Dictator Somoza and the beginning of the Sandinista Revolution they manage to find love, tragedy, death and new beginnings...sound familiar? Some of the stories I will use are based upon things that I have heard through my grandparents, parents and other relatives.
I plan to do this as a verse novel, a novel written in poems, and I know this sounds like a disaster waiting to happen, which I hope it entirely isn't, but for the life of me, I don't think I am able to write like a novelist. Believe me I've tried! I wrote five pages the other day and it was just ronchy bad. It is just seems too clandestine and I find myself writing always reverting back to a poetic style. So I have mapped out what it might look like and I'm looking at least 3 major parts, with about 20-25 poems in each one. Basically, I have a ton of work ahead of me, but since there is basically nobody waiting for me to finish this except for your's truly, there really isn't a rush. But I am giving myself a floating deadline of 8/9/10, seems like a good sequence of numbers.
I have written about 10 REALLY ROUGH drafts of poems, but up to this point, I'm really enjoying writing the story, but I am so nervous about the work ahead. I want these poems to be full of energy and at a lively pace without smothering or keeping the poem on idle. My biggest problem is: How do I mix the narrative with the aesthetic without losing ground on either of them?
I have ordered a few books that are also verse novels (and contacted the author of two of them for guidance) to see how these poets were able to manage such a project. I'm looking to see how they separated their poems, the length, the voice, who is narrating, how close are the sequences between each poem. There are so many questions, because I have never done anything like this.
When the idea for this project first came to mind, I thought I was genius. That I had invented a new form of written literature. Nope I was totally wrong. People have been doing it since they were able to write.
As I take on this project and have begun the preliminary researched the verse novel form, I have noticed that many of the pieces written in this format cater to young readers. Mainly teenagers. This is good and bad. Good, because I would love for students, such as the ones I have, to read something that could give them a better insight on Nicaraguan history and culture. Bad because I think my ego might be a little hurt if my work wasn't noticed among pompous elite of the poetry world. After all they basically tell you who to read.
Fuck it, I'm going to write The Papaya Plot the way I want to write in the best manner I can. If it doesn't get recognized, well as least I have that story off my chest and someday when my children ask me to tell them a story, I can sit and read them poetry about their abuelos y vis-abuelos and that to me would be worth a 100 years of writing.
