I’ve found myself in one of the most unfortunate situations any writer can find themselves in: stuck. I am, simply, stuck. There’s no other way to say it. Stuck. On the witch poem project. On the project of poem-ing altogether. Stuck. Over here, a rock. Over there, a hard place. Between them? Me. Stuck.

I’m doing all that I can do, in this situation: I’m looking backwards, so that I may look forward. I’ve spent much of the past few days with the witch poems, carefully combing them over for clues, hoping that they will become maps to show me the path I should take — or, at least, to show me where the sink holes are, so that I can fill them. I’ve also begun the grimy work of revising, filling in chips and chinks with mortar in order to create a strong foundation for the poems to come. Mostly, I’ve been tinkering with verb tense, and with voice — I’ve found that many of the poems are written in that strange “you”-that’s-actually-an-”I” voice, as if I was so unsure of myself at the beginning that I wanted to create some kind of distance. I think the poems, however, require a sense of immediacy, and very little distance, and perhaps that’s why I’m finding it so difficult to write new ones. For now, at least, I work and work on the old, and Gertrude Stein sits patiently in the rocking chair in the corner, occasionally meowing to remind me that even though I have work to do, she still requires treats.