>Any yet, if you were preparing a collection of poems, would you
>just order them randomly, on the grounds that a reader could (and likely
>would) flip from one to another anyway? Or would you attempt to arrange
>them so that a reader could, if they wanted to, read them in the order
>printed and maybe discover connections between them?
>
>And if, while you were deciding on the arrangement, you discovered that
>there was more than one ordering that made sense, that you'd like to
>point out to the reader, be a bit frustrated that you could only choose
>one?
It's quite true that I take care in ordering poems in a book - or the
words in a poem - but I do not expect a reader to follow it slavishly,
especially since I very seldom read a book of poems from first page to
last, but in a process which might be called layered. Given what is
sometimes made of my poems by readers, interpretations which have totally
astonished me (and this is right, and a reader's due) it seems the best
that can be expected is that I can order to best please myself, and then
leave a book free for everyone else to read backwards, or sideways, or to
throw against a wall, or use as a doorstop.
I must say the concept of linearity in relation to language puzzles me,
unless "linear" can mean like a tree, with branches going in all sorts of
directions, even buttresses diving back into the earth. I mean, poetry
is temporal, and therefore as linear as time is (?), but then there are
the dimensionalities of memory and associations and the random intrusions
of life itself. And I wonder...
Best
Alison
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