Spring Breeze on Purple Iris

I’ve been quoting from my February 1985 diary. At the time I was intermingling diary and poetry. I title my poetry notebooks. This one was named after the watercolor on its cover, Spring Breeze on Purple Iris by the 19th Century Chinese artist Chi Chu-t’ung. I began writing in the journal January 12, 1985 and filled it February 15, 1985. While the prose certainly added a few pages most of the book is poetry. I filled an entire notebook in one month.

I haven’t written at that pace in a long time.

Anyway, I was trying all sorts of stuff, some of it serious, some of it just to keep my pen moving, viz:

Stringbean
be mean
make a scene
on the train
as it rumbles
as it tumbles
down the narrow lane
in pain.