Where Am I Going With This Project?

I have been working for the last few days on this project. It is not necessarily new. Originally, I had included it as a section in my manuscript which I had compiled for JHG's summer workshop. Someone in the workshop suggested that this can be a chapbook in itself. I had kept the thought locked in some compartment of my head, but didn't really think about it much. Because the poems, I guess, seemed to be too personal, written from an I-voice, and yes, angry and whiny. But then, I began to re-visit the project again. Revised some poems for the UCLA workshop. The folks there generally liked them. And I, too, was looking for a "manageable" book/chapbook-length project that I can lift off the ground while writing the dissertation. I began to work on it again. In the last month or so, I have written some new poems aimed exclusively for this project. I must say, the poems that I have written are not exactly in my comfort-zone. I am writing them, I am trying hard here, but I am still afraid. So what are the fears that I have for this project:

1. the poems will be read as a sort of vulgar autobiographical exercise

2. the earlier poems and the ones I am writing now are different in their essential aesthetics. That can mean both--it can be a source of strength, or a source of weakness. I am not sure how it would look in this particular project.

3. These poems are based on family dynamics. Mother-daughter, father-daughter relationships. The daughter's character/voice looms large here. She is the one who is doing the "seeing", the "narrating", the "writing." There are poems which are also on the conjugal relationships of the parents. Some on the mother's relationship to her parents. But these are all narrated by the daughter. So, the daughter's voice acts as a filter. Now, here comes my biggest fear. Will these poems mean anything to anyone other than me? What it is that I am trying to reconstruct here? Obviously, the easy answer is "the personal is political." But a lot of the American poetry, especially women's poetry I am reading these days, seems to be all personal, and no political. There are lots of re-countings of everyday details of the persona-narrator's life, without necessarily reflecting on the larger implications. Without necessarily trying to answer the "so what" question.(This demands a post in itself.) I am not too interested in writing a book of poems which would sound/read like that. So, yes, I am worried about the ideological/political implications of the work I am doing here.

But also, I don't want to stop here. I want to go on, and see where this leads me. Maybe, once I am done with the first draft, I will begin to have a better sense of it? The thing is, I know so many people who have let their fears of "implications", "ideological value" , "political relevance" of their work stop themselves midway in the project, that I don't want to go down that same path. So, let's see.