May has come and gone, and with it: May Day.
As usual it was a busy and productive month of writing (minus a 6-day business/pleasure jaunt to Vancouver) and of loving/hating May Day. But, for the first time I didn't beat myself up when I didn't write a new poem every friggin' day. (Which I have managed to do before, but under self-imposed conditions that I can only describe as inhumane.) I met my own goal of 20 new pieces, all about Edouard Beaupre. (You remember him, the tall guy.) And I didn't even cheat by posting stuff I'd already written, which I'd kind of planned to do.
Where I failed was keeping up with, and commenting on, other poets' work. Gone are those early May Days of hitting post at 11:59 pm, then cruising everyone's work into the wee hours where we'd agonize over line breaks together. Or, at least that's the romanticized version I choose to remember.
I still don't know where exactly the Beaupre poems are going -- but they're tending toward prose (?!?), cowboyism and what I hope will be a dark, wry, intriguing character. After spending a month with Edouard, I feel like I'm getting a sense of his voice. (And a sense of how much research is likely warranted, which I find vaguely frightening.)
But, I'm off to a kind of start, and for that I'm thankful. I'm thankful too, to the May Day crew, for another year of thoughtful writing, reading and solidarity.
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