Stephen Vincent wrote:
> I think the last stanza is lovely, Ken, and quite disowns the disintegration melodrama - or what I hear as such - in earlier stanzas. I mean the last stanza implies - if one takes the dive - that the real stuff in the wings or under the stage.
>
> The trick is not to fall backwards.
>
I'm not entirely sure what you intend by "melodrama." I take it to be
self-reflexive navel gazing that borders on narrative self-pity and
artsy-craftsy references that really have nothing to do with the
speaker's state of mind. Simplicity is good. The guilty parties seem to
be the comments involving dementia and the Pirandello reference. Both
overdo whatever I was after: self-mockery bothers me less than
superfluity and showing off. So I made changes which may not vastly
improve the poem but remove what I found self-referential and
referencing someone else's work to no necessary end. The question for me
is whether the excision and revision (which a moment will reverse:-))
has a positive effect on what I left, and which to me seems vital.
*Intake Interview With the Analyst*
I really do not read much anymore
and I cannot finish what I start to write.
The TV set is broken and
I have no plans to replace it.
I have no attention span.
I am inordinately spiteful and
treasure my surges of schadenfreude
the way other people treasure
their middle-age orgasms:
too few not to be savored.
If I sit here with you long enough
I will start to lose focus, my
concentration will wander, I
will babble not of green fields
but will merely recount the
well-rehearsed lies I have
told myself for years.
Perhaps I have brought my mask
to this session, perhaps
I have forgotten what is beneath it,
perhaps I fear the mask has eaten
what used to be my face and
there is really nothing left.
Do you think you can fix
what has come loose inside my head,
if you look inside the soul
I might dare show you?
More to the point, do I think
that you can do that by reading
what I will not say, by divining
the secrets I whisper not even
to my pillow but only to
the parts of me I cannot hear?
KTW/9-27-09
--
Ken Wolman http://awfulrowing.wordpress.com/ http://www.petsit.com/content317832.html
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"All writers are hunters, and parents are the most available prey."--Francine du Plessix Gray
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