Setting Out

Falling Blue, 1963
Agnes Martin
Oil and graphite on canvas
SFMOMA

So as the year ends I launch this blog, which takes its title from a line in Wallace Stevens' poem, Notes Toward a Supreme Fiction -- "perhaps/the truth depends on a walk around the lake."

My project will be to write about some of the stuff of my life: poetry, art, teaching, writing, family etc. I do think a blog with a more specific focus becomes more meaningful, at least for the writer. My narrower purpose will be to use the blog as a kind of study guide, with myself as both student and tutor. I guess also that anyone else who stumbles upon the blog will participate in my note-taking by adding to the discussion.

The work thus will be akin to some sort of homeschooling experience. I'll set a reading list and as I work through the books will try to write here about my thinking, questions, etc. I'd also like to post my reactions to other experiences that relate to my next book, which I have started to think about in a very loose way. That word "next" should be qualified by an explanation. My chapbook, The End of the Body, was indeed published earlier this year as part of the Quartet Series by Toadlily Press. It was a small collection. I now am researching, revising and drafting new work for the next manuscript.

I guess I'll end this inaugural entry with a quote from Agnes Martin, who wrote, "When I draw horizontals you see this big plane and you have certain feelings like you're expanding over the plane." I hope to keep expanding.