Kenneth
As a visual being, my suggestion is that you rewrite the poem using
different colors for different times, and finally a unique color (put it
black) for those words which unite the entire poem, but still fit perfectly
inside each historical period. So each color is a poem by itself, and
finally the black color which runs all along the poem is another complete
poem, and the latter becomes also the main thought supporting the entire
structure. As if you were doing a mosaic, but if you succeed, then the poem
will be completed. And if I understood right.
Anny
From: "Rebecca Seiferle" <[log in to unmask]>
To: <[log in to unmask]>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Kenneth Wolman <[log in to unmask]>
> Sent: Oct 7, 2003 4:42 PM
>
> Well, there we are. For over a year I have been battling with one poem
> that at one point I thought was done, except that in reading it over I
> discovered its (for me) real subject and the damn thing felt and became
> totally out of balance. It's an experiment in working with three levels
of
> time feeding ultimately into a series of singular moments that reflect
each
> other: but the climactic moment of the poem breaks away from the
> "experiment" of interweaving episodes into the present and frankly takes
> over the emotional core of the piece...and this is maybe 50 lines before
> the end of something that runs over 200. It also, not coincidentally,
> works with the fixed and repeatable--... How do you weave all this and
more (I sound like a
> carnival barker) into something cohesive and coherent? CAN you? What has
> to be collapsed for this to work?
>
> Well, it's hard to say without reading the work, but I'm sure that you can
> weave all this and much more, though I would wonder what you meant by
> "cohesive and coherent," for it sounds as if the writing of the poem,
along
> with the discovery of its real subject, is fluid, as much unraveling as
weaving
> together, and involves a kind of unknowingness on the poet's part, so how
> then can it so definitively fit a "cohesive and coherent" aim? It's a
little
> like taking a loom and using so many threads of varying colors, perhaps
> more than you've ever tried to weave together before, and then saying
> now how can I make the darned thing into a sweater? I am reminded of
> the time I went and visited the serpent mound in Ohio, a great serpent
> of grass made out of heaped earth by a vanished people, and what struck
> me was that they made this great coiling serpent along the crest of a
ridge
> without any benefit of an overview. The modern visitor can climb a fire
> tower lookout and see the whole thing uncoiling along the ridge, but
> as near as anyone can tell, they created it merely by sensing it, seeing
> its shape from the ground. Similarly the Nazca shapes in Peru, unless
> of course, one believes the UFO theories! So the overview or the cohesive
> and coherent aim isn't necessary, if you just follow the threads.
>
> Best,
>
> Rebecca
>
> Rebecca Seiferle
> www.thedrunkenboat.com
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