thanks, Bill.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turtles_all_the_way_down
Nice of you to wonder about the pace of mind movements - punctuation serves a few functions, that may be tops.
also a dash can lead to more of the same sentence so no need for an intrusive capital letter
announcing a new sentence. Hmm?
Have you met the comma queen of the New Yorker?
http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2015/02/23/holy-writ
Max in Seattle
On Mar 4, 2015, at 13:08, Bill Wootton <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
> Very felt, Max, and yes, relational, poignant even. Laughed at 'turtles all/the way down'. Like the progression (regression?) from the world to the past to the particular restrictive present.
>
> I note your punctuational oddities, a particular propensity for the dash, even following exclamation and question marks. Is this a deliberate ploy, to indicate the pace of mind movements?
>
> Bill
>
>
>> On 5 Mar 2015, at 5:14 am, Max Richards <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
>>
>> Sunday at 1 is my time for study - one Carrie is instructor of a poetry group up at St Mark’s now I’ve dropped Vonne the life-writing instructor.
>> At last Sunday’s class, one of the four women (men: two) said of my ‘Christmas Trees’ piece:
>>
>> It gives us plenty to see, but there’s not much that’s relational - trying to make out your partner there…
>>
>> I laughed, saying: when my wife hears this she’ll agree. Marilyn says to me: Don’t show me your poems about things, I want them to be relational.
>>
>> Went home and told this to Marilyn...
>>
>> So next morning with a great effort I began with a thing and… [best wishes from Max]
>>
>> The Globe
>> for Marilyn
>>
>> Wandering Seattle idly
>> on Pike - or is this Pine? -
>> next to the tattoo shop
>>
>> and its welcome sign:
>> No Pets. Must be
>> 18 & Sober
>>
>> I pause with my dog
>> outside the thrift store:
>> for fifty cents - no more! -
>>
>> I should buy this globe,
>> carry it home from
>> the tea-trolley piled
>>
>> with sad remnants here,
>> this out of date world -
>> the late Soviet Union,
>>
>> colonial south-east Asia! -
>> remember exotic
>> French Indo-China?
>>
>> All colored nicely
>> before it faded,
>> which adds to its charm.
>>
>> My hand is longer, larger
>> and lumpier than these
>> mottled Himalayas.
>>
>> Tibet! hello and
>> goodbye. How well
>> does it turn on its
>>
>> metal poles? - this relic
>> of twentieth-century
>> earnestness, left-over
>>
>> curiosity -
>> creakingly, rustily,
>> precariously. Still,
>>
>> you feel your power -
>> let the whole world spin!
>> What stable base is it
>>
>> fixed to? Turtles all
>> the way down? Sadly,
>> no, a tin disc almost
>>
>> heavy enough to
>> prevent disaster,
>> not quite. World tilts,
>>
>> equator first, off
>> and down - only I,
>> quick-reflexed Atlas,
>>
>> clutch, clasp and lift it
>> back to the trolley.
>> Apocalypse not now.
>>
>> I see myself, loaded
>> with it, puzzling the dog,
>> entering our flat -
>>
>> Darling, look what we’ve
>> brought home for you!
>> a useful ornament.
>>
>> And hear her Not here,
>> not now, not near me.
>> Kitsch so bulky she
>>
>> fancies not one bit.
>> I linger over my
>> hemisphere, the South,
>>
>> relegated almost
>> out of sight by the
>> crowded busy North.
>>
>> Down under: Australia
>> seems all desert, New Zealand
>> two blobby islands -
>>
>> two towns, no harbors.
>> In the scheme of things
>> that’s all globe-makers
>>
>> could offer, back then.
>> I can’t go home, wherever
>> home was or is, unless
>>
>> it’s where she is for now
>> in our tidy flat-earth flat
>> all day today and some tomorrows.
>>
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