----- Original Message -----
From: "andrew burke" <[log in to unmask]>
To: <[log in to unmask]>
Sent: Saturday, May 05, 2007 10:40 PM
Subject: Re: "The Return"
Fred - I was/am really captured by this from its first frame: I see it
cinematically. I find the parenthesis unnecessary at times - only
really necessary with '(and the Palace itself?)' Just my personal
aversion, perhaps.
In my reading, I gave Will, Tom and Laura real figurings: Shakespeare,
Beckett, Reading. The Reader brings his own sack of potatoes to the
table.
Thanks for that poem.
Andrew
Andrew, you may be right about the parentheses. A friend once said that my
work seemed to be about the word "or." ("Hamlet in every line!" he added.)
I fight my tendency to overuse that word, but I may rely too much on
parentheses. Their rationale here, however, had to do with the big surreal
change in the middle of the poem. If the recurrent afterthought and
sub-thought of the parentheses keeps readers sufficiently off balance (I
thought), they might accept more readily the messenger's becoming "she." It
would have a dreamlike obviousness.
My earliest poetry, thirty years ago, was full of barely-allegorized
abstractions. Then I spent eight years in LA. Though I disliked the place,
everything I wrote became movies.
In honor of your "sack of potatoes" - a dimension I didn't see, but which
tickles me - I may rename Tom "Sam."
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