Littlefoot

I wrote three more chapters yesterday (all very very rough), and have planned 14 total. Almost 15,000 words so far. Eeeesh. It flies by when you are in a zone, and it is excruciatingly slow when you are not. I hope to get three more done today. We'll see.

I've been reading Littlefoot, Charles Wright's new one. The cover is all white, with just the title and author's name, and the words "a poem." Sort of like the Beatle's White Album, I thought to myself yesterday. And this is Wright's White Album, in a sense. (BTW, Littlefoot is the name of a horse, as far as I can tell).

The book is one long poem in 35 sections. And it is all the same. All exactly the same one endless poem that Wright has been writing over and over for the past 25 years (or more). The one poem of keen nature imagery and lonely observation interspersed with a Southern whiskey drawl and Zen koan-like insights about life, death, memory, the work of the poet. It would get old if Wright weren't so damn good at it.

Here's one section that grabbed me while I was having dinner at Fins last night:

We've all lead raucous lives,
some of them inside, some of them out.
But only the poem you leave behind is what's important.
Everyone knows this.
The voyage into the interior is all that matters,
Whatever your ride.
Sometimes I can't sit still for all the asininities I read.
Give me a hummingbird, who has to eat sixty times
His own weight a day just to stay alive.
Now that's life on the edge.

pg 65

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Happy reading . . . .