> It keeps running through my
>head in riverine twists, subversive in the event--like JK's UN talk and
>Alison's boundary-critiquing response to it,
Wish I could take credit for it, Candice, but it was actually Kate Fagan
undoing the boundary ride.
I've had several dreams _about_ poetry. The most beautiful was about ten
years ago. I was standing on a shoreline looking at the sea, which was
very clear. The sea was a poem by Octavio Paz. Then suddenly I was in
the sea, looking in wonder at the fish swimming past me. They seemed to
be made of golden light, and I realised that they were words, and that if
I kept looking into them I could see all the way back to Babylon.
The punctuation poem went on for pages and was the most beautiful,
luminous and meaningful poem I had ever seen. It kind of looked like
this: -;;;;::::...,.,.''""?.--,.'"/,(((-). For a second after waking I
thought I'd discovered a new language, but somehow it wouldn't
translate...
There's that famous incident of Coleridge's Kubla Khan and the traveller
from Porlock, but that dream was assisted by performance enhancing drugs
and led to a twenty year ban by the International Poetry Council. And
stories like Frankenstein and Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, but they're prose.
Maybe dreams lend themselves more to narrative?
Best
Alison
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