Sunday, March 7, 2010
Wanted: Human + Poem
Wanted: Human + Poem
The phone interview goes horribly awry. Your
mouth tastes tin, goes dumb, goes dry. You
twitch. You forehead smack. You sigh.
You mime for your mirror cartoon ways to die:
Falling coconut, train tracks, thunderbolt smite.
You wallow. And then you remember to write.
Listen, you: You were born for this job.
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Poetry is being who you are meant to be (human + poem - to be who we are is what we strive for). But there's life, and bills, and everything is a distraction from what's truly sought. The distraction is loud - so loud in fact we forget who we are supposed to be and when we can't make life work the way we want (the phone interview goes awry) we of course go to the place of self-effacement. There's something wrong with us. And here's your powerful list: first fear, then panic, then self-blame, then defeat - and sigh carries such a sweetness with it. It's perfect. And it rhymes which makes it settle in me like a house into the ground. (rhymes not at the end of the line, of course not, at the almost-end. Brilliant)
ReplyDeleteThen, your humorous list, so melodramatic, so exactly how it feels. Stupid. Foolish. Ridiculous - a meticulous list chosen so perfectly for what vast images these small pairs conjure (the coconut kills me). But then. Oh there you go again, MASTERFUL: You wallow. And then you remember to write. And it comes like something you've forgotten to remember. It comes in the poem like a lightbulb. It is doing what it is talking about. You are EXTREMELY gifted at doing that. And it is my favorite thing.
And of course, that final line - our purpose, perfect tie to the title.
My admiration of your work is in the purposefulness, the steady hand with which you choose each word and its position to both feel right, and mean just what you want it to mean. You never have to dig, dig, deconstruct to know how to feel after reading one of your poems. It's like looking at a flower. The complexity is completely natural. The simplicity is elegantly complex.
You are a natural. And I might add - w00t on number two! This has me so excited you have no idea (maybe you have an idea). But I was serious - take that line of mine (don't already know what you're going to say) and here's something - write a sevenling with that line as the first line of the second tercet. That should be a good puzzle for you to fight against.