"Unknown poetry" [birthday boomerang]

Fifteen years of making unknown poetry

that's how I've been frittering out my middle age

all for Meher Baba who could grow a tree

easily as scrivening words upon a page

for Beloved Baba who can bloom a flower

perfect in its symbol-life and artistry

so it is we spend our late & lingering hour --

fifteen years of making unknown poetry

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Poem written responsive to the occasion of my own upcoming 50tth birthday (May 20).

I've been writing poetry "seriously" (though intermittantly) since age 10. The 15 years noted in the poem reflect a more concerted poetry-focus that emerged after my 1991 move from New York City to Washington, DC. Living in New York (especially the final year, in Greenwich Village), I'd cultivated a habit of daily oilpainting. When I migrated to DC, I had (for some years) no suitable space where I could continue this practice. Instead, I returned to the practice of poetry.

For a year or so I wrote every day (typically several poems) -- always in a particular open, 21-line form of my invention. At the close of this exercise, I abandoned the form (having written perhaps 800 or more such poems); I wrote now in various other forms and modes; and the writing became more sporadic.

I assembled two manuscripts -- the first called Orison, the second A Bowl of China. I attempted to have them published, via the questionable avenue of submitting them (several years running) to the Yale Series of Younger Poets (and, to a lesser degree, to the likewise annual National Poetry Series). One can submit a MS to The Yale Series only through one's 40th year; after that, one is no longer deemed a "younger poet." Strangely, my MSS were ignored. And with that, my diffident bid for publication was fairly nipped in the bud. (I've had a few poems in arcane periodicals, and two in obscure anthologies; but I have had somewhat conflicted views of the "poetry-career-building" concept and a basic reluctance to pursue such a thing personally -- although I'm oddly eager to recommend it to others.)

For a time (since around 1996), I returned to oilpainting as a central focus; and for several years (since around '99), I shifted my creative attention to video-making.

But for the past year now, willy-nilly poetry has asserted itself as an activity demanding attention. Indeed, since a yaer ago (though I don't deem it a "regular practice" now), the days that pass without some poetry-writing have been infrequent.

Since establishing this blog last fall, this absurd proclivity & dubious activity (this time-wasting prolixity & pathetic verbosity) have taken the shape of a palpable (albeit variegated & unsatisfyingly amorphous) compilation (if we may presume to call it that) -- why the very one that you, Gentle Reader, see immediately before you. This.

Such is the short history of an obscure amusement.