WATERMARK

a poet’s notebook

Established 02004

old woman

March 9, 2016

A Few Notes on “The Visitor”

Usually, when I write a poem, even when I don’t know what it’s “about” (which is often) I recognize that it emerged from some seed in my own memory or imagination. The Visitor (previous post) is not like that. The voice, the house, the room, the ornaments – none of it seems to be mine. It… Continue reading

Uncategorized

crone, dream, illness, old woman, poetry, Writing
May 13, 2004

56 Today

at the altar an old woman counting breaths Fred’s Challenge (inspired by Time Goes By): Find ten photographs of you at different ages, up to the present. Make a Time Travel Montage and post it or a link to it on your weblog . . . a great way to show the persistence of that… Continue reading

Memes, Personal, small poems

aging, birthday, haiku, old woman, poetry

Ancestral (Artificial )Intelligence

I do not use AI to write. For me, writing is how I think, and I prefer to do it myself. If/when I post anything here that I suspect or know to be AI generated, I will tell you.

I have changed this from Artificial to Ancestral, after Abi Awomosu @ Substack. This medium was made with human history, human thought. All of it, bright and dark. It is ancestral.

Poems

Please do not assume that I am the speaker/ subject of my poems.

In these times of creative nonfiction and fictionalized memoirs, I think of the poem itself as true fiction: it is most likely not factual, but it must be true.

It is likely to be — it is best if it is — a truth I did not know before I wrote, and may not understand even then.

A poem is my way of discovering (dis-covering) what I feel; sometimes, what I think — but it is not necessarily biographical.

old woman

A Few Notes on “The Visitor”

56 Today