Today, December 22, marks the 32nd anniversary of Bernadette Mayer's composition of Midwinter Day, certainly one of my favorite books of poetry.
It's an amazing work, an "epic" of motherhood, twenty-four hours in a life transmuted into book form (yet somehow not flattened in the process). It's even more amazing for the fact that Mayer wrote Midwinter Day in a single one: December 22, 1978.
Two years ago today, on the 30th anniversary, I made the pilgrimage to Lenox, MA (a short, lovely trip from Northampton) in search of answers. How does space/place fit into a book that is so largely about time? Does it factor in at all? In trying to force some sort of epiphany, I failed. You see, I couldn't even find 100 Main Street. Is that, in itself, interesting?
So anyway, I implore any of you writerly types to follow Mayer's example and write, if not a compleat book, as much verse as possible today. A kind of "NaPoWriDa," if you will. Though it's nearly impossible to conceive how Mayer did it (in 100+ pages, nary a word seems wasted), why not see what arises? Should be a productive day, if nothing else!