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I'm taking a poetry class that axt told me about; it first met today. I think it'll be a good class. Today we read a Creely poem based on Bresson's Lancelot Du Lac, and excerpts from Austerlitz, and then wrote a poem in response. Except I didn't know we were supposed to write poems, and I wrote a nonsensical detective story instead, a shifting relationship between two characters named Somnius and Auster in a grand old study in the middle of the forest. Then we had to read them all out and comment on each other's stuff.
I like what I write, but it almost never means anything to anyone but me. The teacher compared it to Max Ernst's Hundred Headless Woman, which is exciting because A. is a huge Ernst fan but I'd never seen work by Ernst I liked as much as this book I'd never heard of; but no one really knew what to make of it. And I need to learn how to read (how to speak, how to deal with people). I was so nervous and I read it all so rapidly, hunched-over, in that low lisping voice of mine. No one understood what the hell I was saying. I'd say it was painful, except I'm too happy to have written anything at all. The others: mostly women, mostly older than me, some of them very, very good; and some of the good ones are very funny. Most of them returning students, devoted to the teacher, taking this same class over and over again. We went around the room introducing ourselves. I said lately I'd been writing things "in the voice of a toy frog who spells things wrong a lot" and they smiled with that bemused tolerance bestowed on wackos. . .
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