Monday, December 10, 2012

Time Is a Toy



The Benedikt Suitcase Project continues!  The title is Time Is a Toy, and I’ve just now finished my first through edit.  There are a lot of issues still to work out, but we’ve decided a couple.  Normalizing Benedikt’s use of “&” for “and,” for one.  I’m still finding, though, variant versions of poems as I’m looking (and thanks to those such as, most recently, David Young, who have sent me things!).  Benedikt had an obsessive habit of revising.  Usually his revisions were to add, but then he’d take some things away as well.  So, there are CHOICES to make.  Laura Boss, my co-editor, is a great help! 
 
Just to give you an example, today I took half a page out of one of his poems from the late 1980s, early 1990s.  And, as Laura and I were talking about on the phone the other night, there are something like four versions of his "Fourth of July & Laura & Me" poem out there.
 
Time is indeed a toy. Just saying.
 

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