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…I think sometimes I'm painting with words, often expressionistic, but I try different things and I'm certainly not bound to any particular meter or line beat. I think at heart I am a frustrated musician. I never did manage to master an instrument, and I really love progressive jazz in addition to the rock music we all love. Some classical, some everything, but I like soft, cool jazz the best. It's amazing when they improvise, which is what I think I do mostly. It just comes to me, often in a restaurant or on a bus, and I just start writing.
Poetry: there's no money in it unless you're one of the lucky few shysters who create fast food for the masses. Few people really 'get' real poetry, and that includes most so-called educated persons. You don't need to get a formal education to be poetic (meaning, you either write it or love it or both). The real stuff isn't roses-are-red sort of gibberish (…violets-are-blue, I-see-you, let's-go-to-bed). It's like being a talented musician, which of course involves both having a great ear and also a lot of formal training.
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You need both to be really good at poetry (formal training, whether from studying years of Classics and Literature, or teaching yourself while you drive a cab or shovel acorns to survive; and none it matters if you don't have a natural ear).
I'm getting a few things published, including in some U.S. and Canadian literary magazines, but so far I haven't earned enough to buy a cup of coffee; and it looks like I'd better think about maybe becoming a teacher (of what?). Oh yeah, I have worked a few summers in journalism as a student intern reporter, out on the streets at night, or interviewing city officials, but that's all so boring. I wonder if I could make a career of hithhiking, since I'm good at it. Look at Jack Kerouac and his book On The Road that seems to sell pretty well, especially to the college crowd. Speaking of crowds, I think I'll always be an outsider. That's just me, alone and hitch hiking on the highway, amid Biblical landscapes so you can almost see time and history flowing by. Maybe I'm a Classical Argonaut, an sailor on the Argo back in the wondrous Bronze Age, looking for adventure…what a story that made, still being recited after thousands of years, and they've made more than one movie about Jason and the Argonauts searching for the Golden Fleece, Argo-sailors, aboard the ship Argo built by the shipbuilder Argos back before both Classical and Biblical times. Yeah, this life only comes around one time, and I think I want to grab as much of it as I can, not losing myself too much in our daily bread and all that. We'll see how it all turns out.
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