First, Max, don’t listen to her; relational is as relational does, & it can happen through objects, etc.

But I like the way it moves to the ‘relation’s’ reaction….

Doug
On Mar 4, 2015, at 6:35 PM, Max Richards <[log in to unmask]> wrote:

> 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 this out of date world -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.
>>> 
> 

Douglas Barbour
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Recent publications: (With Sheila E Murphy) Continuations & Continuation 2 (UofAPress).
Recording Dates (Rubicon Press).

There is no life that does not rise
melodic from scales of the marvelous.

To which our grief refers.

              Robert Duncan.