From Eric Baus “Tuned Droves”
NEW RULE: for every day off, one book. This way those uncelebrated library tommmeesss, neatly stacked to be forgotten, might actually go back into public circulation. The process of return date, renewal, return date, renewal, spanning the last few months is just shameful—
I strictly read to be a better writer, terrible? My critical eye is always on for what to steal, try out, and avoid. Can’t help it, I want to “solve” what works and what doesn’t. Sometimes pithy jing-jangles and anecdotes pop into my head when reading. Equal parts ridicule and respect, they mushroom into little mantras that I use in my own writing.
While reading Eric Baus’s “Tuned Droves,” on the burke gilman in between the Fremont and Aurora bridges –check it, total sweet spot: two benches, a bronze pope, houseboats, loons, people who work strange hours– a bird pooped square on page 61. He was so high that my sunning neighbors and I couldn’t even see the speck of him. “What are the odds!” one gent said, which I didn’t really understand, because I thought “Pretty good.”
In conclusion, hysterical confirmation to blog about the collection.
Here are my take aways and half-truths.
Fully verb the s*** out of the nouns that normally do little. Push this to the step before personification, and then rightfully stop (When toasters starting laughing in poems, it’s corny).
Place yourself under a new body of rules; spatial, legal, logistical. Previous actions can have completely impossible results in a poem, “Because I have a neat nest and a phonetic head, Miss allows me to feed the bees” (p. 51, “The Continuous Corner,”). What!? Play with this.
Something can blatantly be or turn into something else without explanation. I often feel the pressure to justify such jumps, but how exciting when, “There is something simple about wood, being nothing but wires” (p.21, “This is a Film About Real Toy Trains”).
Nothing needs to be grouped for the sake of conserving the page, it is your page; “There is a man a man two women a boy and a boy.” Naturally, justify this taken space so as to keep the audience from pulling their teeth out (if their toothy grins are important to you).
Only children describe things with color as they were more recently blind to it.
I still don’t think a lake would want to watch a movie, but I guess I’ve never asked it.
In a poem you can have “two tongues” or perhaps even more.
Make what’s most familiar feel like a lie.
Thank you Eric Baus!
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