Perplexed as to why this has suddenly come into my inbox from 2015. Can anyone explain? It could have been the last time I communicated with Lawrence. Not sure. I have not sent anything to this list for a very long time.
Cheers
Tim Allen
> On 14 May 2015, at 11:14, Lawrence Upton <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
>
> Thanks, Tim.
> I haven't given too much semi-conscious thought to it yet. This morning I
> am listening to the fridge gurgle and drinking masses of tea I don't really
> want, only to wonder at my need to urinate twice as a predictable result -
> my version of an old gull with its foot in fishing line or net... But I am
> aware of it - the problem... the question...
>
> Like any self-respecting old seagull, I like to think I am right, and
> always have been; so your message is very welcome; but the people who have
> written, friends all, in a Quaker sense, raising the questions, most
> recently Sheila, I think, have taught me a lot in the past, not just by
> seeing potential improvement but just by their benign challenge,
> encouraging me to consider, though I may well not agree finally.
>
> As in this case, my making purposes have rarely been that conscious and are
> made verbal retrospectively, following benign challenge. I imagine that's
> true for many of us. I wouldn't have it otherwise, short of a
> further-beneficially-evolved brain. Thinking IN poetry, rather than
> thinking PRIOR to poetry.
>
> I suspect that I shall keep the poem as it is; but I need time to be sure.
> This, too, is not a process which can be declared decided and ended by a
> "Are we agreed then?". It will, I hope, come to me as the poem came to me,
> in much the way that bodily processes announce themselves (the standard
> input output ones for instance especially in today's extended teabreak) -
> the tomato I just ate was not desired by reasoning but by seemingly
> increasing its attractiveness to me as it lay on the kitchen surface. Not
> inspiration (ha!): it's all quite bodily and internally generated
>
> The interrogation mark, and I have wondered about its presence, is not
> terribly standard in its intention. I've been working with it as an
> indicative tool in 2 and 3 voice poems, workshopping texts with Tina Bass
> often. There I notate my text, marking an interrogative cadence by using an
> inverted interrogation mark to start. I have found that useful; but of
> course I had initially to say to Tina what I meant by it; and it isn't
> necessarily questioning; and it isn't upspeaking.
>
> I felt I shouldn't do that here. I don't want the oddity (for the
> readers).... It needed something there, as the painter says in O'Hara...
>
> My tea is cold. Time to fill the kettle. Thanks for this. I shall unthink
> on this. I may be gone some time
>
> L
>
>
>
>
>
>
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>
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>
> On 14 May 2015 at 10:28, Tim Allen <
> [log in to unmask]> wrote:
>
>> Hi Lawrence, I don't agree with the questions some have asked about the
>> 'maybe' and 'sometimes' - for me those are pretty essential to the mood of
>> the poem as I think you wrote it - they link the concreteness of the images
>> with the fluid and conditional mind of the one thinking/seeing the images -
>> which is what a lot of your current stuff seems to do. I love it as it is.
>> that's my pennyworth.
>>
>> Cheers
>>
>> Tim
>>
>> On 13 May 2015, at 07:19, Lawrence Upton wrote:
>>
>>> you'll see sometimes an old or infirm gull,
>>>
>>> a bit grubby, long since less than ebullient,
>>>
>>> limping in a length of fishing line maybe --
>>>
>>>
>>> that's how their seasons end, rapidly slowing
>>>
>>> towards the speed of stone; still in motion;
>>>
>>>
>>> the swaying moon glides on, turning, vacuous;
>>>
>>>
>>> it's a hobbled chunk of an avalanche
>>>
>>> banging towards the big emptiness, opening
>>>
>>> it for rock to fly in tethering circles
>>>
>>>
>>> of curves; parabolas; and springs of straightness
>>>
>>> through meshwork of nested slingshots; tangled?
>>
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