On Follow-up

Hey, remember that time I was in a poetry reading? Well, thanks to the folks over there at Artpost, there is now a video of me reading poetry on youtube. You should check it out.

On Ideas

Those who know me well know of my great love for the writings of William Shakespeare. While I don't know better than anyone else what it is that makes his writing so persistently powerful, but I know that I aspire to write with even a measure of his skill. I have certainly always wanted to write a play in verse, whether iambic pentameter. Like many amateur dramatists, I also feel a strong draw toward the tragic, there is just something mesmerizing about a poetic sadness, something engrossing in the scale of compacted human sorrow. And when I think about trying to write like Shakespeare, I often think of writing tragedies.

Lately, a number of these ideas have been blossoming, and I am not sure yet what to do with them, because I don't yet think I am equal to task of compressing these stories into dramatic form, but I still can't stop the ideas--ideas like a play about the decline of King Saul (think the Scottish play meets Richard II), like the tragedy of Absolom (something like Henry IV part 1 with some King Lear and Titus Andronicus to give it that tragic flavour), or like the story of Robert E. Lee during the Civil War (this could be considered a history, but if you know much about Lee's life, there is plenty of tragedy to go around). I guess all I can do for now is let the ideas simmer.