I spent the better part of Saturday and Sunday doing one visual poem from Misery that I thought worked out well.

I pasted pale yellow strips over the unwanted text and assembled a tiny collage with four elements, including an upside-down astronaut, and was generally pleased with myself.

To take a break from the eyestrain, around 3 o’clock on Sunday I went downtown to see the August Sander exhibit (again). One of the photographs has lodged itself in my brain. I wanted to snag some extra brochures from the show to see if I can make something of the images, or just cut them up for a deck of playing cards. Now there’s an idea.

Coming back on the subway I was like, you know, actually that poem with the astronaut image kind of sucks, the collage is good but otherwise it’s trash and you should tear it up.

I reluctantly agreed with this ‘second opinion.’ I did like the launch of the poem but the end deteriorated. I spent another who knows how long rethinking the poem. With a visual poem it’s not like you just erase the offending line. I had to destroy the page and hope there was another untouched p. 57 (?) in one of my five copies of Misery (there was).  Luckily I could peel the collage off the page and re-use it. Thank you Uhu.

I believe I’ve salvaged it. It’s been about 22 hours now and I haven’t had any ominous pangs of doubt yet.