Done
Still Point, Caroga Lake, New York
I have furiously spent my last year writing, even more so than usual, and most furiously in the last two months, because I have been writing a poem, or many poems (one a day), each as a letter to someone I know, and each mailed out, on paper, to its intended recipient. I started on my fiftieth birthday (25 May 2010) and ended on my wife Nancy's fiftieth birthday (24 May 2011). As such, this was a celebration of being fifty, of reaching the half century mark, for on every day that I was fifty I wrote a letter to someone.
This project, which goes under the title 365 ltrs was meant, in a significant way, as a writing practice, a way to keep myself writing, but it was also meant to be a way of communicating with individuals I know, some I work with every work day, some whom I've grown up with, some I have never met but have known for years. I wrote to family members, to fellow poets, to fellow archivists, to fellow mailartists, and others. The plan was to make this project an act of giving. A poem may always be a gift, though the gift is often just for the the creating poet, but to succeed a poem must be a gift received with some quantity of pleasure. But a gift only need be given with such intent for it to be what it is. We cannot ensure all of our gifts will be accepted happily, but people often responded to me to thank me for the gifts, some responding with other creative works, which was a result I had hoped for. So far, 129 of them (about one third of the total) have not responded to my letters, some of them people I see frequently enough, but that is not a problem because a gift needs no gift of thanks in return. And I'm sure that some people were unsure how to deal with a sometimes strange poem appearing, unbidden and unannounced, in their mailbox.
A year is a long time, 365 days (and 366 in a long year), and much can happen in that time. Some people I wrote to in this project I didn't even know when I began the project, but sending them letters was what I needed to do. And two people died. My only aunt, or only blood aunt, died early this year, after struggling with emphysema for years. She called me after she had received her letter from me to say it was the best gift she'd ever received. It was sad to lose her to the cold bosom of eternity, but I was happy to write her while she was still alive--and she was the third person I wrote to, which I did to ensure I'd reach her in time. The other person who died was Art Reinhart, a friend and former colleague who was just days younger than I. He died by his own hand, which happens when life becomes too much for us, and I am sad he is dead but respect his decision about his own life. He didn't quite understand the strange poem I'd sent him, which was one I'd written in an airport and in flight, but he appreciated it enough to thank me.
As I have noted elsewhere, I had many goals in this project, and I had many ways of looking at the project. I didn't see it as little more than a project to write poems, even though that is what it was. Also, what the project was at the beginning was not quite what it was by its end. At the outset of the project, I had planned to write poems directly in the form of letters. The poems were always addressed to the recipient and they were reasonably informal pieces with few formal differences between them. Soon, I changed that tactic and tried to write poems as different from each other as I good, so poems within this project include poems in various poetic forms, light verse, sound poetry (three of the poems), visual poetry (27 of the poems), pwoermds, and all with as wide a variety of styles as I could manage.
I also wrote to many places: the vast majority of states in the United States, every continent except Antarctica, and many countries. Still most of my poems went to North America (313) and Europe (39), and of the rest of the continents only Asia (with 7) had more than one letter heading out to them. This almost was surprising to me, since I've live on most of those continents, but I now know hardly anyone I knew in childhood. As expected, the enormous majority of letter went to people in the US (297), with my own state of New York accounting for 105 of those. As you can see, this was and is and will be a statistical project, which statistics I'll compile in their totality as part of the final project.
Because the important fact to note is that this project cannot be done now. All I've done so far is write the first draft of hundreds of poems. I still have to try to make these poems into usable poems. Certainly, that isn't necessary for the project to work, in my mind, but it's part of the work.
As I created this project, posting each of the poems online, I added tags to identify the poems, by recipient, location of recipient, type of poem, and how I primarily knew the recipient. Most recipients were either poets (158) or archivists (84), but I also wrote to 21 friends (those friends whom I didn't know as archivists or poets), 41 family members, 19 mailartists, 9 artists, and a number of miscellaneous characters (a doctor, two collectors, etc.). Forty of the people, I identified as couples, because I wrote a poem both pairs of people who were couples of some kind.
The poems are also identified as to event. At least 63 of them were letters sent on the occasion of a birthday, and three were condolences. The purposes of letters are various, as are those of poems. Writing is a process of connecting, just as speaking it. Sometimes we do it well, and sometimes not. I wrote over a wide range of quality over the course of this year. In the end, all I can say is that the only reward is the poem. The only reward is always the poem, whether the poem works or not.
ecr. l'inf.
I have furiously spent my last year writing, even more so than usual, and most furiously in the last two months, because I have been writing a poem, or many poems (one a day), each as a letter to someone I know, and each mailed out, on paper, to its intended recipient. I started on my fiftieth birthday (25 May 2010) and ended on my wife Nancy's fiftieth birthday (24 May 2011). As such, this was a celebration of being fifty, of reaching the half century mark, for on every day that I was fifty I wrote a letter to someone.
This project, which goes under the title 365 ltrs was meant, in a significant way, as a writing practice, a way to keep myself writing, but it was also meant to be a way of communicating with individuals I know, some I work with every work day, some whom I've grown up with, some I have never met but have known for years. I wrote to family members, to fellow poets, to fellow archivists, to fellow mailartists, and others. The plan was to make this project an act of giving. A poem may always be a gift, though the gift is often just for the the creating poet, but to succeed a poem must be a gift received with some quantity of pleasure. But a gift only need be given with such intent for it to be what it is. We cannot ensure all of our gifts will be accepted happily, but people often responded to me to thank me for the gifts, some responding with other creative works, which was a result I had hoped for. So far, 129 of them (about one third of the total) have not responded to my letters, some of them people I see frequently enough, but that is not a problem because a gift needs no gift of thanks in return. And I'm sure that some people were unsure how to deal with a sometimes strange poem appearing, unbidden and unannounced, in their mailbox.
A year is a long time, 365 days (and 366 in a long year), and much can happen in that time. Some people I wrote to in this project I didn't even know when I began the project, but sending them letters was what I needed to do. And two people died. My only aunt, or only blood aunt, died early this year, after struggling with emphysema for years. She called me after she had received her letter from me to say it was the best gift she'd ever received. It was sad to lose her to the cold bosom of eternity, but I was happy to write her while she was still alive--and she was the third person I wrote to, which I did to ensure I'd reach her in time. The other person who died was Art Reinhart, a friend and former colleague who was just days younger than I. He died by his own hand, which happens when life becomes too much for us, and I am sad he is dead but respect his decision about his own life. He didn't quite understand the strange poem I'd sent him, which was one I'd written in an airport and in flight, but he appreciated it enough to thank me.
As I have noted elsewhere, I had many goals in this project, and I had many ways of looking at the project. I didn't see it as little more than a project to write poems, even though that is what it was. Also, what the project was at the beginning was not quite what it was by its end. At the outset of the project, I had planned to write poems directly in the form of letters. The poems were always addressed to the recipient and they were reasonably informal pieces with few formal differences between them. Soon, I changed that tactic and tried to write poems as different from each other as I good, so poems within this project include poems in various poetic forms, light verse, sound poetry (three of the poems), visual poetry (27 of the poems), pwoermds, and all with as wide a variety of styles as I could manage.
I also wrote to many places: the vast majority of states in the United States, every continent except Antarctica, and many countries. Still most of my poems went to North America (313) and Europe (39), and of the rest of the continents only Asia (with 7) had more than one letter heading out to them. This almost was surprising to me, since I've live on most of those continents, but I now know hardly anyone I knew in childhood. As expected, the enormous majority of letter went to people in the US (297), with my own state of New York accounting for 105 of those. As you can see, this was and is and will be a statistical project, which statistics I'll compile in their totality as part of the final project.
Because the important fact to note is that this project cannot be done now. All I've done so far is write the first draft of hundreds of poems. I still have to try to make these poems into usable poems. Certainly, that isn't necessary for the project to work, in my mind, but it's part of the work.
As I created this project, posting each of the poems online, I added tags to identify the poems, by recipient, location of recipient, type of poem, and how I primarily knew the recipient. Most recipients were either poets (158) or archivists (84), but I also wrote to 21 friends (those friends whom I didn't know as archivists or poets), 41 family members, 19 mailartists, 9 artists, and a number of miscellaneous characters (a doctor, two collectors, etc.). Forty of the people, I identified as couples, because I wrote a poem both pairs of people who were couples of some kind.
The poems are also identified as to event. At least 63 of them were letters sent on the occasion of a birthday, and three were condolences. The purposes of letters are various, as are those of poems. Writing is a process of connecting, just as speaking it. Sometimes we do it well, and sometimes not. I wrote over a wide range of quality over the course of this year. In the end, all I can say is that the only reward is the poem. The only reward is always the poem, whether the poem works or not.
ecr. l'inf.
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