Final Arrangements for Your Poems?

[WickedEve]

Have you made final arrangements for your poems? You could die in the next three minutes and what happens to your word-babies?!

I've been miserable and on the verge of death for months now. I've actually been sick since this past summer. I was in pain the day I got married in December. This morning I finally heard from my doctor about my biopsy. No cancer. Okay, I'm not dying right now but it did made me think about my poetry. Of course my first thoughts were of my children, my dog, um, my husband. Then I thought about all my poems. Where are all of my poems? What do I do with them? Do I take them with me? No, it might be too hot there for a little poem. Do I organize them and give them to someone? Write a new will??

So I started digging them out of my hard drive and off my CDs, thumb drives, external hard drives, etc. -- hundreds of them from the past ten years. My poems are potential orphans. What will become of them?

What will happen to your poetry? I'm still thinking about taking mine with me.

 

[bflagsst]

Have you made final arrangements for your poems? You could die in the next three minutes and what happens to your word-babies?!

I've been miserable and on the verge of death for months now. I've actually been sick since this past summer. I was in pain the day I got married in December. This morning I finally heard from my doctor about my biopsy. No cancer. Okay, I'm not dying right now but it did made me think about my poetry. Of course my first thoughts were of my children, my dog, um, my husband. Then I thought about all my poems. Where are all of my poems? What do I do with them? Do I take them with me? No, it might be too hot there for a little poem. Do I organize them and give them to someone? Write a new will??

So I started digging them out of my hard drive and off my CDs, thumb drives, external hard drives, etc. -- hundreds of them from the past ten years. My poems are potential orphans. What will become of them?

What will happen to your poetry? I'm still thinking about taking mine with me.

I'd worry about vanity when I died, what people would think of me if I had a plan for my poems. So I wouldn't want to have a plan. If people collect my poems and present them then that's the best. I guess just having hard copies of your poems would aid in that situation. SmithPeter's work has lasted unto death. I learned about him from the folks here that went out of their way to preserve his poetic memory.

 

[annaswirls]

I'll adopt any you want to live in a warm climate.

In college, I willed my poems to my best friend, but I have not talked to her in years. I did not think I would live this long, truth be told.

I am planning on putting together my poems in some sort of anthology, print on demand, just in case anyone ever wants to see them in an easy way. I am scattered and disorganized.

I might have them printed in giant font so when I am ancient and half blind I can spend my hours with rice pudding and poetry of my foolish youth.

Who knows, maybe one of our grandbabies will someday want to see how we spent our time. If I were your daughter, I surely would not want to miss on your poetry, Madame Eve.

I still think you should put together a WickedEve Smithpeter collection. I sure would buy one.

 

[annaswirls]

I'd worry about vanity when I died, what people would think of me if I had a plan for my poems. So I wouldn't want to have a plan. If people collect my poems and present them then that's the best. I guess just having hard copies of your poems would aid in that situation. SmithPeter's work has lasted unto death. I learned about him from the folks here that went out of their way to preserve his poetic memory.

hmm. Yes. I have not been doing a very good job in that preservation. And I am probably going to close down Mannequin Envy. Now I am regretting that. Hmm. Thing is about electronic publications, they do not last.... one reason I am doing a print anthology of Mannequin Envy.

You should definitely get a collection together yourself bflag. I had a friend who offered to do a nice leather bound anthology for me. Don't think that offer still stands, who knows. I am not a good friend. I flit and fly too much, roots trailing after

 

[DrewberryLess]

May I please suggest that you post all your poems here? I will turn them into centos in your honour! hahahah.

 

[normal jean]

My daughters actually had an argument about who gets what poem I'm leaving them to my girlies, ( both are on the Deans and Presidents list at USC and will graduate together! I am so proud of them

I miss you guys, even then grouchy ones


P.S. Evie, I am So sorry you are sick, but thank God that it's not cancer. It would be cruel to take you. And, I think you should do the print on demand, I would die if I could never read an Eve poem again, Dear Mule Sister.

 

[annaswirls]

I am an insensitive biatch. I did not even say anything about your being sick and in pain. I can't stand to think of you as sick so I just pretend it isn't ther. Denial is a sweet thing. BUT I am glad it is not cancer, that would really piss me off.

 

[CharleyH]

Have you made final arrangements for your poems? You could die in the next three minutes and what happens to your word-babies?!

I've been miserable and on the verge of death for months now. I've actually been sick since this past summer. I was in pain the day I got married in December. This morning I finally heard from my doctor about my biopsy. No cancer. Okay, I'm not dying right now but it did made me think about my poetry. Of course my first thoughts were of my children, my dog, um, my husband. Then I thought about all my poems. Where are all of my poems? What do I do with them? Do I take them with me? No, it might be too hot there for a little poem. Do I organize them and give them to someone? Write a new will??

So I started digging them out of my hard drive and off my CDs, thumb drives, external hard drives, etc. -- hundreds of them from the past ten years. My poems are potential orphans. What will become of them?

What will happen to your poetry? I'm still thinking about taking mine with me.

As much as I adore poetry and will remember you for yours, Eve, I am more concerned with my stories. I may not write an iambic pentameter well, but I sure as hell can turn a phrase for erotic fiction. I don't want to be remembered for my erotica, though. I'd prefer to be remembered for my non-erotic efforts. I think you should publish - publish anything you can and do it now! Now is the only moment any of us have/own.

 

[Epmd607]

My wife already told me she's going to destroy all the poems I wrote about other women. She'll probably tell my friends that I only wrote dirty stories. I would like to be remembered as a poet of one poem like that French guy. Some poem everyone knows, not a book or anything, just some nice poem that gets reprinted as a novelty a hundred years on. My life's mission is to be some form of novelty act.

 

[CharleyH]

My life's mission is to be some form of novelty act.

A fluffer? Now you see it and now you don't. lol

Teasing

 

[EroticOrogeny]

Haven't really given it much thought.
I guess my wife would get them, but unless I told her where they were beforehand ...

Paper or electronic ? not sure there either - each has its own fragility, unless well-archived
(my publications are likely to be around for a lot longer than I will).

Eve - hope you get well soon.

 

[Tzara]

Have you made final arrangements for your poems? You could die in the next three minutes and what happens to your word-babies?!

I've been miserable and on the verge of death for months now. I've actually been sick since this past summer. I was in pain the day I got married in December. This morning I finally heard from my doctor about my biopsy. No cancer. Okay, I'm not dying right now but it did made me think about my poetry. Of course my first thoughts were of my children, my dog, um, my husband. Then I thought about all my poems. Where are all of my poems? What do I do with them? Do I take them with me? No, it might be too hot there for a little poem. Do I organize them and give them to someone? Write a new will??

So I started digging them out of my hard drive and off my CDs, thumb drives, external hard drives, etc. -- hundreds of them from the past ten years. My poems are potential orphans. What will become of them?

What will happen to your poetry? I'm still thinking about taking mine with me.

Eve, I am very sorry to hear about your health problems. I hope the negative biopsy signals the start of a rapid and thorough recovery from your illness.

To speak to your question, though, I think it depends on what one thinks about the quality of one's poems and about whether there is anyone who would value them after your own death. I also think these are very different questions.

My poems, at least so far, have no intrinsic value. I am neither skilled enough technically nor intuitive or empathetic or analytic enough artistically to write anything with real value. I like to write and find it diverting and fun, and I sometimes am serious about it (meaning trying to write a good, rather than an amusing poem), but I know my poems aren't very good. At best, I might aspire to produce something like what Epmd607 called a "novelty act," but even that I'd say like maybe, if I'm really, really lucky, I might someday write one poem that somehow seems to get things just right that for whatever reason might be reprinted in collections for "a while," whatever that means.

But if I was so lucky as to write a poem that achieved some kind of longevity, I wouldn't have to do anything about it--it would be perpetuated through means and by people I have nothing to do with. So, basically, if I'm successful enough, I don't have to worry about it--the system will take care of it.

I think most of us, from a practical standpoint, would be more concerned about the "anyone who would value [your poems] after your death." You have children and a husband (and, apparently, a dog, though, presumably the dog cannot read), all of whom might be interested in preserving what you wrote because they cared about you.

In my case, I don't have children, so no interest there. My wife is not particularly interested in my poems (and, frankly, would have no reason to be, as I'm often writing about idiosyncratic interests she doesn't share) and, in fact, I generally don't share my writing with her (just as she generally does not share her photography with me--it's kind of a mutual "that's your space" kind of thing for us). None of my Real Life friends would be the least bit interested, or even know that I try to write poems.

There may be a few people I've met and become friends with on the Net that might be interested in keeping some of what I've written, for sentimental reasons. I don't know. I would assume they would be saving poems wherever they appear: threads, forums, blogs, publications.

So, anyway, my take would be that I don't need to do anything. In fact, I'd probably destroy any records of what I have written, given time. Or not. Most likely, I wouldn't do anything.

Some might find that attitude depressing, perhaps. I don't, because it simply means that I like to write stuff. Whether anybody else likes it, whether even my family likes or, at least, tolerates it, whether it is any good artistically. I like to write stuff and, for me, that mostly means writing poems.

 

[annaswirls]

May I please suggest that you post all your poems here? I will turn them into centos in your honour! hahahah.

y'know, I keep wishing that this was facebook so I can give a quick "like" thumbs up.

I would love to see a Drew-ified Eve cento.

 

[annaswirls]

T-Zed, what you say makes a hell of a lot of sense.

I mean, besides the bs that your stuff is not this and that. Tickle torture.

I write because it is fun, I used to think I had to keep or share everything. It is okay to have a poem be an experience in time that passes.

But I have come to view my writing as more of a conversation than a legacy. If I can write my way into a conversation and make a connection, even if only for a moment or two, the participants in that conversation, including myself, will change. Ever so slightly. Or maybe more. That, to me, is immortality, those small changes that come and poof, gone.

There are lines of poetry that remain with me, have become a part of my internal dialogue, a part of how I make decisions, how I move through life. Some of those are from poems I read in a book, but most are from poems of someone with whom I have had some sort of connection.

The poem does not have to last, but the connections, they do, long after we have forgotten them.


Do you ever find yourself replaying a line of a poem you read by someone at lit? A simple phrase? Coffee clouds at dusk? Lady bug eggs? Change minus quarters?

At any rate, Tzara, you might not have children, but you do have a poetic family all of whom care about your poetry, in part because we care about you, but also because the things we care about you are reflected in your poetry, and since you ARE a very talented writer, the you that we see s a clear and pleasant image.

I hope that does not sound too corny or sappy or dumb, because I am being sincere.

 

[LadynStFreknBed]

My daughter and I were just talking about this the other day. We were discussing how wills are probably starting to look interestingly different with the inclusion of .com's and so forth. I already told my daughter to help my mom put things into her name if anything were to happen to me. I trust that my mom would give everything to my kids in due time. With my paintings, writing, and websites, I guess it could be a bit of a nightmare. My daughter and I were discussing how new wills need to have usernames & passwords for websites owned, Google AdSense, and Amazon (for poets or writers who have things published through Amazon). I'm not so worried about my poetry and nonfiction. My daughter knows where my files and journals are. Hopefully, I won't die before my first chapbook is published. Geez, this is morbid. I guess I should write detailed instructions, especially for the websites. As in- if the website is no longer making $x, let the domain name go. If all websites slip below $x monthly income, cancel the hosting. Okay, now I'm getting a headache..

 

[UnderYourSpell]

Apart from Ron I can't think of a single person that would be remotely interested, bar a quick scan maybe, of my stuff and Ron as well as the rest of my family get perplexed if it doesn't rhyme. I've always said that once I've submitted something that its been sent out into the world to earn its own living ..... rather like selling puppies. If you've ever bred puppies you would understand that, cute they may be but come 7 weeks you want to see the back of them .... piranhas on four legs. Same with poems someone else can get the pleasure (or not) I've done my best for them.
Actually one of my poems is flitting around out there somewheres because I got sent it as a funny email once so somebody along the line must have pinched it. Wonder if they passed it off as their own work lol?

As for you young Eve well your poetry is special it's often taken me down roads I've never even imagined before and it should be saved. I am sorry life's been kicking you hun but very very glad you're still with us, for all you're irreverent, funny and downright disgusting (I say that with awe and not at all in a disparaging way) even though you terrified the life out of me when I first came here!

 

[champagne1982]

Michael wants to gather mine up and have me record all of them. That's a lot of reading... la.

He and my family know where to find them.

 

[Senna Jawa]

I've been miserable and on the verge of death for months now. [...] No cancer. Okay, I'm not dying right now [...]

C'mon, Eve, get well!

Best regards,

 

[Epmd607]

A fluffer? Now you see it and now you don't. lol

Teasing

I thought up this television sitcom about two fluffers. They would be gay fluffers by day and crime solvers by night. I even filmed the teaser and theme song for the first episode. No one wanted to be in it though. "Hey man, wanna be in my web sitcom? Yeah, you'll play one of the gay fluffers... Oh, you're busy?"

 

[Angeline]

Have you made final arrangements for your poems? You could die in the next three minutes and what happens to your word-babies?!

I've been miserable and on the verge of death for months now. I've actually been sick since this past summer. I was in pain the day I got married in December. This morning I finally heard from my doctor about my biopsy. No cancer. Okay, I'm not dying right now but it did made me think about my poetry. Of course my first thoughts were of my children, my dog, um, my husband. Then I thought about all my poems. Where are all of my poems? What do I do with them? Do I take them with me? No, it might be too hot there for a little poem. Do I organize them and give them to someone? Write a new will??

So I started digging them out of my hard drive and off my CDs, thumb drives, external hard drives, etc. -- hundreds of them from the past ten years. My poems are potential orphans. What will become of them?

What will happen to your poetry? I'm still thinking about taking mine with me.

Geez D, I just saw this. I'm glad it turned out okay. Now you can be sick like me, with stuff where you can get a lot of sympathy but not actually have much wrong with you.

Final arrangements for my poems? Well lessee, there's the ones I flushed down the toilet, the ones buried in notebooks god knows where, the ones I wish I couldn't ever remember again.

But ok, most of the ones I think are worth saving my kids know about. They have copies of some (things I've written about or for them). I also have everything on my hard drive and a few discs that I update now and then. I think both my kids understand (cause they're about grown now) that those poems are important to me and I want them (if no one else) to have them. You remember I wrote a poem once for my great-granddaughter? It would mean a great deal to me to know that someday I will a) have great-grandchildren and b) that they'll see some of my poems. Aside from that, well I can't take it with me so I'm satisfied.

And I really am glad you're ok.

 

[Tzara]

I write because it is fun, I used to think I had to keep or share everything. It is okay to have a poem be an experience in time that passes.

But I have come to view my writing as more of a conversation than a legacy. If I can write my way into a conversation and make a connection, even if only for a moment or two, the participants in that conversation, including myself, will change. Ever so slightly. Or maybe more. That, to me, is immortality, those small changes that come and poof, gone.

I didn't address this kind of thing with what I said earlier, but I agree with you. Our writing (even my writing) sometimes can connect for whatever reason with someone—says something someway which changes perception, lays out a truth that has not been acknowledged, whatever.

You, and other poets here, have done that for me. Said something in some particular way that helped me connect to it, understand it, or at least understand it better than I had before. You personally are particularly good at helping me understand (again, at least a little bit) what the experience of being female is like, but there are many others who help make that less strange to me as well.

That's not to say I fully understand your experience, of course. I can't. But it helps get me closer to understanding it, which is the point, I think.

There are lines of poetry that remain with me, have become a part of my internal dialogue, a part of how I make decisions, how I move through life. Some of those are from poems I read in a book, but most are from poems of someone with whom I have had some sort of connection.

The poem does not have to last, but the connections, they do, long after we have forgotten them.


Do you ever find yourself replaying a line of a poem you read by someone at lit? A simple phrase? Coffee clouds at dusk? Lady bug eggs? Change minus quarters?

Sometimes there are phrases I remember, or attitudes, or metaphors.

Your poems sometimes stick with me because yours are very grounded in reality, or at least seem to be, and are very vivid. I won't embarrass you by talking about specific poems that have stayed with me, but there are several (all of which I have probably mixmastered up in my head to the point that you wouldn't recognize them).

I've swooned over a whole string of other poets for similar reasons. You all have said something in some way that made particular sense to me. So it lives with me.

But I guess my point would be that I'm not going to live that long, or something. What I meant by this: "There may be a few people I've met and become friends with on the Net that might be interested in keeping some of what I've written, for sentimental reasons. I don't know. I would assume they would be saving poems wherever they appear: threads, forums, blogs, publications."

If I've written something you've found interesting or useful, you will remember it. If not, then... not.

At any rate, Tzara, you might not have children, but you do have a poetic family all of whom care about your poetry, in part because we care about you, but also because the things we care about you are reflected in your poetry, and since you ARE a very talented writer, the you that we see s a clear and pleasant image.

I hope that does not sound too corny or sappy or dumb, because I am being sincere.

I know you are. My point (I think) was about a bigger thing than personal relationships and how you affect individuals you've known.

What I meant when I said my poems have no intrinsic value (or however I phrased it) was that I doubt that I have written anything with lasting value--something that will be reprinted and studied twenty, fifty, a hundred years from now.

Think about it. I love the poet Alan Dugan, and of his collected poems, there are perhaps, what, ten? twelve? that I think are worth preserving. And this is a guy whose poems I really like.

I don't believe in any kind of afterlife, which colors my attitude about this, of course.

I know. Downer.

That's me, though.

 

[bflagsst]

I think I dreamt of this thread in some weird way. In the dream my fiancee is in the hospital with leukemia all bald and I was battling this other guy for her deathbed affections. I had to create something to differentiate myself from my enemy in her eyes, something that would bring her recognition before she died. I'm not sure what I created exactly, but she let me in her hospital bed and the other guy disappeared.

 

[EroticOrogeny]

Dreams can be so wierd. Not too long ago my wife and I were together, done or about to make love, in someplace that was a hotel room/restaurant/car wash - they all blended together smoothly.

 

[bflagsst]

Dreams can be so wierd. Not too long ago my wife and I were together, done or about to make love, in someplace that was a hotel room/restaurant/car wash - they all blended together smoothly.

I'm on a weird dream roll. Last night I was dreaming of poems again. I kept getting variations of one of my older poems "never as fantastical a creature or Creation". Then it was an unrelated haunted house adventure where I'm trying to get my friend's girl to tell me some secret about him, but she kept showing me these Jane Austen novels off this bookshelf. Like we're in a haunted house and you're gonna show me barnes n noble editions of Emma and Northanger Abbey?

 

[normal jean]

I didn't address this kind of thing with what I said earlier, but I agree with you. Our writing (even my writing) sometimes can connect for whatever reason with someone—says something someway which changes perception, lays out a truth that has not been acknowledged, whatever.

You, and other poets here, have done that for me. Said something in some particular way that helped me connect to it, understand it, or at least understand it better than I had before. You personally are particularly good at helping me understand (again, at least a little bit) what the experience of being female is like, but there are many others who help make that less strange to me as well.

That's not to say I fully understand your experience, of course. I can't. But it helps get me closer to understanding it, which is the point, I think.
Sometimes there are phrases I remember, or attitudes, or metaphors.

Your poems sometimes stick with me because yours are very grounded in reality, or at least seem to be, and are very vivid. I won't embarrass you by talking about specific poems that have stayed with me, but there are several (all of which I have probably mixmastered up in my head to the point that you wouldn't recognize them).

I've swooned over a whole string of other poets for similar reasons. You all have said something in some way that made particular sense to me. So it lives with me.

But I guess my point would be that I'm not going to live that long, or something. What I meant by this: "There may be a few people I've met and become friends with on the Net that might be interested in keeping some of what I've written, for sentimental reasons. I don't know. I would assume they would be saving poems wherever they appear: threads, forums, blogs, publications."

If I've written something you've found interesting or useful, you will remember it. If not, then... not.
I know you are. My point (I think) was about a bigger thing than personal relationships and how you affect individuals you've known.

What I meant when I said my poems have no intrinsic value (or however I phrased it) was that I doubt that I have written anything with lasting value--something that will be reprinted and studied twenty, fifty, a hundred years from now.

Think about it. I love the poet Alan Dugan, and of his collected poems, there are perhaps, what, ten? twelve? that I think are worth preserving. And this is a guy whose poems I really like.

I don't believe in any kind of afterlife, which colors my attitude about this, of course.

I know. Downer.

That's me, though.

Good Morning Tzara-

I know it's non o mine, but Jeez, you over think everything, I mean, wow.... it's your decision, but still.... you would have made a good Baptist preacher the way you go on and on, lol

I read your "did or do you regret what you have published and was blown away. HOW can you regret publishing anything s good as your poetry? I mean, hell, publishing shows someone likes it, it can show your growth over years, ( with you, minutes).

I just wanted to take a sec to let you know I admire you, always have, and to say, Cut yerself some slack, unless you just like to beat up on yourself like me...