It does, it does, Stephen, & the argument has legs: keep it new?
Doug
On 1-Sep-09, at 11:35 AM, Stephen Vincent wrote:
> "Your son Stephen is on the phone."
> "Sea Gull?"
> "No, mom, I am your son 'Stephen'."
> "Oh, I guess I am in the wrong season."
>
> Mix a little dementia with bad hearing,
> the poetry keeps rolling on out.
>
> Some will argue, and I tend to agree, that poets often suffer from
> aphasia.
> In the dark gap between the object and its name, a certain kind of
> inventiveness must come in to play in which alternative words, even
> sounds, gather up to lay a language down on whatever it is. It's in
> that chemistry that we get fresh 'news' - rather than a repetition
> of cliches, conventional definitions, and what have you. Of course,
> such innovations provoke resistance or, if totally wrong headed,
> compassion or ridicule.
>
> However, the lternative formations might produce new ways of saying
> something familiar. In this case of my mother, another level of
> applicable meaning may also emerge. At 93, she frequently says or
> implies that she is old, useless, etc. Indeed, she has come to a
> point in life where she perpetually finds herself "in the wrong
> season." Nevertheless, her imagination keeps pulling down those
> words and phrases, insistent on getting some accuracy on the
> condition of things. Until we go mute, I suspect most of us, as
> poets, word by word, will remain in the same grappling contest.
>
> Stephen V
> http://stephenvincent.net/blog/
>
Douglas Barbour
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