CHAPTER ONE
The Journey Continues
I published the first version of my Of Manywhere-at-Once in 1990, then quickly did a second improved edition. I was energetic in those days, and fully expected my book to be just the first in a series of six to ten volumes. I didn’t see why they shouldn’t come out one a year.
I thought about what I’d write about in volume two for a year or more following publication. I scribbled a few notes about it, too, but did nothing really constructive about it until 1996, if then, for all I did then was gather diary entries that would continue the narrative of the first volume, essentially the tale of a man’s struggle to make a living (or more) as a writer, and to bring the gospel of what I now call plurexpressive poetry to The People. That the book remained unfinished so long I attribute mainly to the first volume’s not getting anyone influential behind it, and my not having enough money to invest in a follow-up.
My notes began with “1. Present Circumstance,” and the following entry from my diary:
“16 March 1996: start with my hopes of this week regarding the Guggenheim, then give history of my attempts to win awards, plus the history of volume one’s reception. Second chapter should reveal my one Great Accomplishments since Volume One, my mathemaku, and cryptographiku–and go on into my other experimental poems. Chapter Three’s beginning: ‘Then there was The Sonnet.’ Although I had written dozens of versions of it, as described in Volume One, I hadn’t finished it by the time I published the latter (or its second edition). Indeed, I continued madly revising even unto . . .
“Beginning of Chapter Four: ‘Meanwhile, I remained active as a scholar,’” but, I told myself, “the book should be memoirish, and not rigorously classificatory: mention poems, poetries, poets, in passing. “