So, I don't know, really. I guess I'll talk more about how I kind of wrote these three poems and maybe that'll be a good starting place.

All three of these poems are part of a book I just finished writing a month or two ago called "Grotesques." I didn't set out to write a book but I noticed a lot of the poems I was writing were following this common theme of, well, grotesquery, and I decided to strike while the iron was hot and try and write as many poems along this theme-line as I could and see where I could go with it. A few other of my poet friends were writing books at the time or had enough material to be writing books and I kind of wanted to give it a try too. So I started just trying to write about terrible things. Some were personal, some weren't. And, as you can see with "Any Body," not all of them were necessarily terrible.

When I sit down to write a poem I don't know where it's going at the end, that's for sure. I didn't know where "Fan Death" was going at the first, I just wrote out that first line, and then I was like "well, _refugee_, what about fan death? What about those crazy people that think that leaving fans on at night will kill them?" So I went with that, and then with each line I guess I got more of an idea of what the poem was about. It's kind of like I winnow down what the poem is about as I continue with it; like each line becomes a choice in the topic. By the time you get to the line about the shack in Florida, really what I was pushing for was just some specificity; a lot of workshops in college have taught me that people love specificity so sometimes I'm just like "here let me try to get REALLY SPECIFIC". And then it evolved. I was driving for something terrible, and I figured out what it could be.

Once I write a poem I definitely edit it. Usually I can edit it a few times right away, sometimes that's for minor stuff like meter or "what makes sense." Then I put it away, and I guess at that point it becomes a series of "Let me put this away and then look at it again" over ever-widening cycles of time. When I'm done with a poem it's not necessarily because I'm happy with it, but because I simply can't figure out what to change any more. Sometimes it just becomes a mess of words and I look at it and I can't see anything good and I can't see anything bad. Sometimes at the end I'm really happy with it. Usually, to be honest, most of my affection for a poem has been beaten out through the editing process and I just look at the poem and can't rate it on any scale any more (if that makes sense).

In closing, if I am honest again, Zeno's Paradox is my favorite poem of the 3. I think I am at the point with "Fan Death" where I can't tell if it's good or crap any more. However, the reception on that one has been really positive, so I will take what is given :)

Not ignoring you, just trying to think more about it before I get back to you, lil . Might be a longish post.