Argentine Journal: This "coming of age," "artist as a young woman" explores four months travel in Argentina. Exposing growth of the artist, poetry and methods of writing, it also reveals interior views of Argentina.

Argentine Journal July

One month from today we leave for Buenos Aires. Time for me to fall into my survival technique. Lop off everything nonessential. Nonessential to me as a poet, those priorities being time and space to write. My priorities for living being - what?

Can't write poems this morning. Nothing working. Got to sit back and let the poems write themselves.

Want to do a poem about leaving. One leaves long before they leave. Or perhaps even before they know they are leaving. My dream last night of my daughter's unborn baby, who was going to die. My new marriage I want so badly-going to die. Of course death, as I know so well on cynical days, comes to everything.



Oatmeal for Breakfast

It is a cold and duty day.
No escape.
Only a plodding return
to the harness of obligation
however manufactured.
A wild horse
gone back to stable.
Do this before that.
Think: in four months
what will you have?
In a year, ten?
"I could not love thee
Dear, loved I not.."
It is a cold and duty day.

In 1984 I received the opportunity to live for four months in Buenos Aires, Argentina, and later to travel this fantastic country. I set myself the task of writing a poem a day. What I learned is that work-on-a schedule can be as excellent as any you do - and your schedule enhances greatly the amount of work you can turn out. At some point, we are all beginners. The real artist feeds her soul AND feeds her need for work.