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    The Empty Notebook Interrogates Itself
    The Empty Notebook Interrogates Itself
    The Empty Notebook Interrogates Itself
    Ebook92 pages24 minutes

    The Empty Notebook Interrogates Itself

    By Susan Thomas

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    About this ebook

    The Empty Notebook began its life as a very literal metaphor for a few weeks of what I thought was writer’s block, but was really the struggle of an eccentric persona to take over my working life. It won. And for the next three years everything I wrote came to me in the voice of the Empty Notebook, who, as the notebook began to fill itself, became rather opinionated, changed gender, alternately acted as bully and victim, had many bizarre adventures in exotic locales and developed a somewhat politically-incorrect attitude. It then began to steal the voices and forms of other poets and tried to immortalize itself in various poetry reviews. It is now thrilled to collect itself in one slim volume.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherFomite
    Release dateMar 21, 2020
    ISBN9781937677145
    The Empty Notebook Interrogates Itself
    Author

    Susan Thomas

    Susan Thomas is faculty at the Indira Gandhi Institute for Development Research in Bombay. Her research has been in financial econometrics, specifically on models of the volatility of financial prices, and aspects of market microstructure in Indian financial markets. She has also worked on models for the Indian zero coupon yield curve, govt. bond index construction and probability of default for Indian firms. Her work can be accessed on the web at http://www.igidr.ac.in/~susant.

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      Book preview

      The Empty Notebook Interrogates Itself - Susan Thomas

      Part One

      THE EMPTY NOTEBOOK ENTERS THE WORLD

      The Empty Notebook Interrogates Itself

      The empty notebook wonders

      about existence. It wants to

      know how blank space can fill

      a void, how emptiness can be

      a burden. When a page detaches

      itself, the empty notebook feels

      pain ruffle its edges. The empty

      notebook thinks emptiness contains

      something more than nothing, but

      is filled with possibility, with longing,

      with the urge to start from scratch.

      The Empty Notebook and Code Alert

      The empty notebook has nothing to say

      about Iraq, or China or the murders in Rwanda,

      Libya, Darfur, Bahrain, the massacres

      in Hebron and Haifa, the bombing

      of Beirut. The empty notebook insists

      its slate is clean. It changes its cover

      to orange then red and back to yellow.

      Terrified by rumors, it listens to bulletins

      on the hour, receives intermittent briefings

      from unreliable sources. How can it tell

      where danger lies—in the street, in the air,

      on the shelf? The empty notebook interrogates

      a random sample of all who cross its path.

      It avoids racial profiling, is responsible to no one.

      The Empty Notebook and Denial

      The empty notebook is

      terrified of coffee rings,

      which remind it of mortality.

      Likewise the smell of burnt toast,

      the sound of anything being torn.

      The empty notebook obsesses

      over rocks, scissors, fire.

      The empty notebook practices

      denial, seeks relative safety in

      the shelf’s monastic life. It strips

      down to essentials: coffee cup,

      pencil, cough drop. It yearns

      to slam itself open to tango,

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