The first full week of classes is done, and I am making the usual adjustments for the Fall semester. It is always a bit hectic going from having no routine schedule in the Summer (when I only teach an online course) to a rather strict one in the Fall (the four classes I have this semester are all face-to-face ones that meet at regular times). It usually takes a couple of weeks for me to work through the kinks in my sleep schedule and adapt to being around people again on a regular basis. Monday is a holiday, and that will help.
I didn’t have too much time for writing, and my mindset wasn’t really conducive to it, anyway. Still, I added a bit to the outline of I Will Be King and wrote a long, complicated scene. It involves three of the main characters, and I had to think about it quite awhile before writing it. The first thing I had to decide was the viewpoint, since that would dramatically affect what would be in it and how it would be presented. After that, I had to think about the internal dialogue of that character, the kind of interaction that would take place between that character and the second one, and then how the third character would be introduced into the situation. The last of these was crucial, since what happened at that point would significantly affect the plot development of the rest of the novel. I had a pretty good idea of what I would do, but I wasn’t fully committed to it until after I wrote it. I hope to add another scene or two this weekend, if they cooperate. I’ve already had a few false starts on one of them, and that usually means my approach to it is off or my subconscious is still tinkering with the content. I’m confident that I’ll get it done, but, just like the last scene (which rolled off the pen when I finally wrote it), I need to think about it some more before I do.
Anyway, here’s the poem for this week:
Ism Not! Ism Too!
The current state
. of politics
can be distilled
. by semiotics
and rendered as
. a simple phrase,
a familiar one
. from our early days
when the only words
. we could ever use
when arguing were
. Is not! Is too!
Back then we lacked
. the necessary tools
to resolve our petty
. little disputes,
and Congress acts
. the very same way,
while hidden behind
. all the words they say
is the pissing-contest-root
. of the cataclysm
that claims my ism
. is bigger than your ism.
© 2017, all rights reserved.
rphansenauthorpoet 