Anthology

[Tracy Mitchell]

1.to build the world from
floaters in my one good eye
2.logs for one cabin at a time

3.I barter cotton pages for
a village to be a city,
4.a place to shout at the world


This still seems the proper order, to me, but perhaps could be improved by the cut and toss method.

It may take serious time, but I am fixed on making this into a poem.

T

[Qwerty]

Some poems give me a heartache but, like Indar, yours gives me a headache. Maybe you're challenging us to read up to you but I feel like I'm working a jigsaw puzzle without the clues. Or too many because, like Roe mentioned, you've given us at least ten.

Charles Krauthamer, one of my favorite authors, accused Trump of being solipsistic. Charlie used the pejorative connotation, of course, but I can see how a person might be tempted to be skeptical that anything but his own  thoughts and sensory interpretation exist. Reminds me of "I think therefore I am." Which doesn't imply that nobody else exists!

I look forward to reading your revision. God help me if I can't parse that one...

[Tracy Mitchell]

Qwerty -- thanks for the reading and comments. A sociopath can give every indication of being a solipsist, but that doesn't necessarily go the other way. Here, the N is yelling at the world, so there demonstrably remains some sliver of belief. But s/he is so vastly alienated, and the hunger to the contrary hasn't as yet made its way into words.

This was not meant to be a puzzle. Sorry your head hurts.

Cheers.

T

[indar]

Here, the N is yelling at the world, so there demonstrably remains some sliver of belief. But s/he is so vastly alienated, and the hunger to the contrary hasn't as yet made its way into words.

This explains the disjointed nature of the narrative and I quite relate to the premise. I can't wait for the final draft.

[Tracy Mitchell]

Thanks Indar. the re-write is becoming large. I had anticipated that some of the wider gaps would be fudged by the title, suggesting separate volumes, etc., and the poem being a collection of these separatenesses. That obviously has not penetrated. I am taking a different route, but it remains unclear whether the destination remains the same. ;

Cheers.

T

[indar]

In some poetry anthology I once owned till it fell apart completely was a poem written about the N's friend who was a painter. The painter titled one of his paintings "Still Life With Sardine Can" but there was no such can in the painting. The artist explained that over the course of several weeks the can, which was the original inspiration got painted out as other items gained in importance. It was a good poem that applied to several life situations.

[Tracy Mitchell]

Indar -- is this the poem? It is marvelous.

Why I Am Not a Painter
by Frank O'Hara

I am not a painter, I am a poet.

Why? I think I would rather be

a painter, but I am not. Well,

for instance, Mike Goldberg

is starting a painting. I drop in.

"Sit down and have a drink" he

says. I drink; we drink. I look

up. "You have SARDINES in it."

"Yes, it needed something there."

"Oh." I go and the days go by

and I drop in again. The painting

is going on, and I go, and the days

go by. I drop in. The painting is

finished. "Where's SARDINES?"

All that's left is just

letters, "It was too much," Mike says.

But me? One day I am thinking of

a color: orange. I write a line

about orange. Pretty soon it is a

whole page of words, not lines.

Then another page. There should be

so much more, not of orange, of

words, of how terrible orange is

and life. Days go by. It is even in

prose, I am a real poet. My poem

is finished and I haven't mentioned

orange yet. It's twelve poems, I call

it ORANGES. And one day in a gallery

I see Mike's painting, called SARDINES.

[TrevorConway]

Hi Tracy,

Some interesting ideas and phrases here, but it took me a while to get into it. This is a bit of a wild idea, but would you consider experimenting a bit by reversing the order of verses (and removing the 2nd and 4th verses, which I felt were weaker than the rest and seemed to veer away from the main theme in a way that diluted the quality/force of the poem)?

Just an idea of what I mean, in case it's not clear:

Anthology

I swallow hard a hunger
as yet without words,

a lump of coal, to light the way
squeezed and squeezed
to well short of perfection.

I barter cotton pages for
a village to be a city,
a place to shout at the world,

A pappa strophe
bloated to test if you catch
the syntax of my solipsism.

I hope this feedback helps in some way even if you don't try it out.

All the best,

Trev
 

[indar]

I like trevor's idea.

But I'm really posting because I did answer your question during a time that TTB was not acknowledging my attempts to post at all. So, yes that is the poem. I didn't remember it exactly right but considering how many long years it's been since last I read it I impress myself by how well I did. How on earth did you find it Tracy? 

[Tracy Mitchell]

Trevor -- excellent suggestions. It says something about a poem when the the stanzas can be fungible, the order of them of varying consequence. Yes, I will be playing and experimenting with the revisions on this. I appreciate your take.

Indar -- Yes, wonderful poem. Where did I find it? Like you, I am a google-ite.

Thanks for the very useful feedback.

Cheers.

T