Chapbook

Spring Break! Last week, I had finished the second draft of my first chapter, had turned it in to my dissertation group for discussion and feedback. One of my co-advisors liked it, the group liked the arguments overall. Although, the general feedback is, I will have to do a lot more with the editing and language and footnoting. So, basically, I still need to go back and do a lot of the finalizing stuff. But at least, the argument worked, and I think, I do have a better sense of the direction of my project.

In other news, just finished revising a poem for which I had received some good feedback. My own sense is that, it's almost there. Maybe I will need another edit after a while. A tweaking here, and a tweaking there. But mostly it is done.I also have developed in the course of the last week or so, a better sense of my first collection of poems. Initially, I was more interested in coming up with a full-length book. Undoubtedly, the full-length book would have allowed me with more of a space to deal with both thematic and formal complexities. But, the way a lot of my poems are evolving, I don't think a full-length book will have much space for a lot of the shorter poems I have written in the last three years.So, a chapbook project, I think, will be much more suitable for bringing together the kind of work I have been doing for the last three years. If I have to look into this project with an impartial eye, I will have to say, these poems are not that impressive by themselves.It's not that I think they are totally bad or unreadable, but I wouldn't say, they are earth-shattering or anything. But they have played a very important role in my life, and my growth as a poet/writer, because they have pointed out the areas to me--the areas where I need to work, the kinds of research I need to do in order to keep on writing more meaningful and relevant poems, the formal areas where I need to develop my linguistic skills. In that sense, this chapbook project will play an important role in bringing to fruition a specific phase in my life.

So, for now, I need to write the concluding poem of the collection, bring them all together in a single file, and begin to revise. I am giving myself a year to do all that work. So, hopefully, by the summer of 2011, I will have the manuscript of a chapbook ready. Ready enough to be sent out to publishers! Wish me luck!