Well, here's the answer to your first questions,
Frederick: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ythrdCsOFJU .
The tooth lodged in the forehead was in yesterday's news
(literally--or maybe the day before yesterday's)--a footballer,
who discovered four months later that another footballer's
tooth had lodged in his forehead.
Kenny Goldsmith's wonderful piece @ Harriet, though
is the wellspring here.
Hal
"I can see that you are the kind of young man who
is accustomed to winning arguments."
--Gertrude Stein to Mortimer Adler
Halvard Johnson
================
[log in to unmask]
http://home.earthlink.net/~halvard/index.html
http://entropyandme.blogspot.com
http://imageswithoutwords.blogspot.com
http://www.hamiltonstone.org
http://home.earthlink.net/~halvard/vidalocabooks.html
On Jul 18, 2007, at 1:28 PM, Frederick Pollack wrote:
> ----- Original Message ----- From: "Halvard Johnson"
> <[log in to unmask]>
> To: <[log in to unmask]>
> Sent: Wednesday, July 18, 2007 12:52 PM
> Subject: Sonnet: Unpacking My Toothbrush
>
>
> Sonnet: Unpacking My Toothbrush
>
> Long an anti-dentite, I’ve searched high and low for post-
> consumerist dentistry, coming to believe, after many
> years, that such a thing may not indeed be possible, or
> even feasible. Traditional relationships leave open few
>
> avenues, aside from this thicket of language, that even
> are worth exploring. Digital dentistry seemed, once, to be
> promising. “Open, please. Now rinse.” But the tooth
> lodged in my forehead continued to cause problems:
>
> blinding headaches, for example. My parents’ first
> teaching to me: “Watch where you’re going.” But then
> how I navigate, more than what I create, became more
> and more central to my living. Quantity trumps quality.
>
> Even at my age, I have more teeth than I will ever use,
> more fat than I shall ever, ever come to chew.
>
>
> (after Kenneth Goldsmith)
>
> [http://poetryfoundation.org/harriet/2007/07/
> i_am_unpacking_my_digital_libr.html#more]
>
>
>
> Hal
>
>
> I like this. The narrator's ornery strangeness, implied by "anti-
> dentite" (what could that be)? Then, after a fantasy any reader
> can share - instantaneous, "digital" dentistry - the unemphatic
> switch to the surreal ("the tooth / lodged in my forehead"). Which
> implies, at the least, awkward relationships and is in line with
> our initial sense of the narrator. So is the mysterious suggestive
> contrast of "navigate" and "create"; he - one - would be more
> concerned w/ "navigation" w/ a tooth rammed in one's brow. My only
> suggestion is to drop "come to" in the last line. Good poem.
