Jerome Rothenberg really loves his words, the way they sound, the way they fit, the way they evoke certain images.

I can tell all that when he performs... He seems very aware of them in every way.

I wish he'd think of lecturing or just plain speaking as performing, too. A poet who is so aware of words and sounds should never say so many "uh"s. I realize, of course, that people usually say such meaningless "uh"s to fill up the spaces of silence in between words. But sometimes silence is good and beautiful; it makes what is spoken more meaningful.

Fill the silence up with meaningless "uh"s, and you've got words that have lost all meaning...

...And an audience that has lost all interest and the effects of coffee and Vivarin.

2-3-95

It's been almost three months now since my boyfriend left the country. Before he left, he told me (alluding to a movie about the British band, the Sex Pistols) that he might get so horny that I would have to send him some sex in a box. Well, today (so that it gets there by Valentine's Day) I sent off to him the next best thing to sex in a box; I sent him hugs and kisses. That is, I sent him a bag of Hershey's Hugs and a bag of Hershey's Kisses.

There's no poetry involved in that at all, but I thought it was kind of poetic.

2-4-95

I increased my hours again, so this journal might suffer a great deal from my neglect. There is, after all, nothing poetic about working a little over minimum wage at a movie theatre.

Except maybe this: Life sucks, and then you clock out.

I wonder if that might have been a haiku in Japanese...

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