Poetry identity crisis yesterday as I searched through my work for a poem directed at the public to use as a model for the 7th grade broadside project. I don't address the public - EVER. I address a rhetorical you quite frequently thouh. I had a sudden insight into why journals aren't interested in my work - perhaps I'm too slight, too insular, too not very much going on except fun words bonding with one another in a sprightly or too often cynical slanted manner. I am thinking about this. I am thinking hard and thinking how difficult it is to write, really write, and how I am the queen of quick, fascile, language play, but then want to get out quick. On the Verge of Flight syndrome? I don't want to be mean to myself, but my poems need more toothsomeness. I want a red wine with so much body I can almost eat it, with a big round flavor and long after taste. The color must be darker than red. I don't want to feel I can see through it if I hold the glass to the light.

Next week Kim Addonizio comes to Seattle Arts & Lectures with Gary Lilley and her blues harp. Hurrah. I worked with her (had her as workshop leader) at A Room of Her Own retreat for committed women writers at Ghost Ranch in New Mexico. Gorgeous raw country and Kim was terrific. My roommate and I revised our totebags to "A Room MATE of Her Own" since everybody had to share. Very funny. AND there were no writing desks or adequate outlets for computers/reading lights in the rooms. Had to get creative to find places to WRITE at the writer retreat. The second to the last day a white turbaned guru in shorts and Hawaiian shirt surrounded by accolytes showed up at lunch time. When we went back to our rooms, each had a drawing of a hennaed hand on it. The guru and his group arrived for their stay a day early. Some people discovered new people and their luggage in their rooms. Someone in our group who had once been an acolyte of the guru said she was sure he knew full well he'd arrived a day early.

All of this clings to my idea of Kim Addonizio, sorta like that red dress she wants in the poem.