After three planes and a boat, I'm finally back in Vung Tau, on the coast of Vietnam. Though not quite settled in, above is my writing station for the next article, which should be up in two days. (Stop breathing down my neck, will ya!) I'm paying $330 a month for this room that's near plenty of eating options. Utilities are included, and there's even a washing machine.

To keep my back straight, I often write while lying on my stomach. In the March/April 2004 issue of American Poetry Review, I actually had an article about this. Rereading it just now after so many years, I've made some slight revisions:

 

ON MY BELLY

 

FIVE OUT OF THE LAST SIX YEARS I'VE lived outside the US, more or less out of a suitcase, away from most of my books. I used to feel exhilarated just looking at the spines of all the books in my library. Now I have hardly any books, only memories of books.

I write with a laptop while lying on my belly (like Jarry!). I revise directly on the computer and do not print out working drafts. I am entirely a paperless writer. The view outside my window is of olive trees, vineyards and the distant towers of San Gimignano, but I don't see them, because I'm lying on my belly. Vallejo, "Life would be worth it even if one were reduced to lying on one's belly."

Trained as an artist, I enjoy scrutinizing paintings in museums and galleries, but I prefer to keep my own walls absolutely blank. Blank walls are like blank pieces of paper, an inducement to defilement and violent, unhinged expressions.

I don't mind natural noises--bird songs, children whinnying, old men clearing their throats--filtering in through my window, but I cannot work with any sort of mechanical din in the background whatsoever, such as canned music or even the ticking of a cheap clock. I own neither a TV nor a stereo. I don't think we were ever meant to hear the same song sung exactly the same way more than once in a lifetime. People who enjoy listening to canned music 24 hours a day must be the unhappiest of creatures.

I always write while perfectly sober. I don't write drunk anymore. Before I was married, I kept irregular hours and would often work at night, sometimes through an entire night. The night is truly a different country. Now I can write at any time of the day, because I always carry the night inside me.

In Philadelphia, I loved to leave the house, dazed, at the first break of light, after a night of writing. At that hour the street lights would still be on, and a teenage male prostitute, pale, scrawny and rather underdressed for the cold weather, could be seen bending over to peer into the crazed side mirror of a parked car. He was fixing his stringy hair.

"What are you doing out so early?"

"Just walking. What are you doing?"

"Making money!"

Underage whores and writers mirror each other in their raw beauty and foolishness. They are only put here on this earth to give older men unsatisfying oral attention. Artaud, "And you are quite superfluous, young men!"

Harold Brodkey said that once you're satisfied with a piece of writing, once you think it's "publishable," then you can really toy with it, just to see what happens. Isaac Babel said that he could revise a story any number of times, even years later. Pierre Bonnard was once caught in flagrante trying to retouch one of his own paintings hanging on a museum wall. Last thought is indeed best thought.

Living in non-English-speaking environments, I must rely on the Internet to stay in touch with the English language. Email provides me with an outlet for virtual English conversations. Otherwise I speak no English whatsoever, just Vietnamese (with my wife) and bad Italian (with strangers). It is interesting to note that emailing encourages everyone to write more, a spur to literacy, but the casualness of emailing permeates everything we write nowadays.

The Internet allows us to converse without looking at each other's face. Like Philip Guston, I've always preferred to look at the side of a face, instead of straight on. I also like the back of the head. Am I a coward then? No, just discreet. O the tyranny of a human face!

Talking of tyranny, I've come to realize that I much prefer to live on the periphery of the English language, so that I can steer clear of the tyranny of its suffocating center. In this sense, I am a quintessential American. A Unapoet, I like to homestead just beyond the long reach of Washington.

How tiresome to always be expressing oneself! Wouldn't it be better to express other people's longings and secrets? Faulkner, "I am tired of everyone's individualities, and nauseated by my own."

Since I've always been inspired by amateur writings, the Internet provides me with instant access to the underbelly of the language. Simply by going online I can plunge into a vast ocean of heartfelt confessions by sappy child molesters, frank racists and uncontrite murderers.

Hearing the rapid syllables of a foreign language, a bigot is infuriated because he's reduced to an infant. Poets, on the other hand, should welcome all opportunities to be befuddled. To not know what's happening forces one to become more attentive and fill in the blanks. Hence, poetry.

One may start with a rather stupid idea, but if one expresses this stupid idea just right, with finesse, then one may still end up with an interesting poem. With irony, everything is possible.

One may begin writing a poem in complete freedom, that is, in complete randomness, but one should end the exasperating process in abject submission.

[Certaldo, Italy, 2004]