Lulu Prat

Once you've selected your character flaws – and there are so many to choose from – you're well on your way to becoming a human being, with a physical presence and first and last names.

Alice wrote yesterday about the poems I read in the workshop that "the challenge is to make the observed world and the observer himself equally engaging. The poet's ethical challenge is foregrounded – how to both see and be at once."

Alice underlined the words, "see" and "be."

I'd written the poems almost six years ago in a happy, mad rush in Wyoming. Each poem has seven lines, so I called them "Half Sonnets." There are over ninety half sonnets, but I only read four of them in the workshop yesterday.

The truth is that I'd forgotten about the half sonnets, stuffed the things in a drawer, then found the forgotten manuscript, if you want to call it a manuscript, without even looking for it. Holding the ms. up to the light I looked through the poems quickly, liked what I saw but had no memory of having written them.

When I told Lea Ann about them, about three weeks ago, she agreed to read the thing. Lea Ann, a Wyoming native, liked the poems, some more than others and some not at all, holding mostly positive feelings about them as a whole.

Kathy and Ben, with Alice the other two poetry work shoppers, offered supportive and discouraging observations about the half sonnets, enough of each to permit me to think about continuing on with them. All three agreed that the poems I'd shared constituted a sustained meditation on place, but that some work still needed to be done with the speaker's voice, mostly to make sure it maintained its humanness while dispensing with the ego at the same time.

Lulu Prat is the name of a member of the new band, The Prettiots. I'm pretty sure she plays guitar. I've never heard the music of The Prettiots, but I like the name, Lulu Prat, a lot.