Anthology

[Tracy Mitchell]

~

Anthology

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

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

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

I do good — a volunteer
fence around the squash plot
of a star-shaped urban garden

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

I swallow hard a hunger
as yet without words.

~

[Colm Roe]

Jeez Tracy, every time I read it I find my last interp was wrong.
I've narrowed it down to about 10, no, make that 11 because I just read it again.
Love 'the syntax of my solipsism' , but how are we to check the syntax if we don't exist?
Ah, this is a test (for you, and us) to see if we actually do exist!
I do good? 

[Tracy Mitchell]

You go that part of it, Colm -- it is a solipsistic write. The title is intended to suggest more separation between the stanzas than usual. It started as ghazal draft. The benefit there of course, is that the stanzas are not suppose to relate to each other. I need to revise this to tighten the connections -- make them more obvious.

Thanks Colm.

Cheers.

T

[indar]

I have a question:

are poems supposed to give us a headache?

[Tracy Mitchell]

Ruh-roh.

[indar]

Huh?

[Tracy Mitchell]

Ruh-roh = the way Scoopy Doo says "Uh-oh".

[indar]

Hi Tracy,

OK I've been thinking. I take my cue from the syntax reference and conclude that the lines are bits and pieces in the manner of The Floating Opera (John Barth) in which the narrator imagines life as being part of an audience that dwells on a river bank and a barge or something rigged up as a stage on which a play is being performed plies up and down the river. The audience gets the plot in bits and pieces and out of sequence and never quite the full truth. There the resemblance ends. 

Either that or you've been messing with those dadaists again. Come to think of it they would have loved Barth.

[Tracy Mitchell]

Linda -- I love the thesis of The Floating Opera! Yes, each person has their own set of conclusions based on their own [vastly incomplete] set of observations. I once built a closing argument in a felony assault case around the Floating Opera view of reality.

I so dearly wish my shamble of a poem was based on something this intuitive and, well. . . substantive. Alas, it is simply a matter of the stepping stones across the creek being too far apart. Revision is in progress.

Thank you for coming back. Wish it was for something better.

Cheers.

T

[indar]

But Tracy:

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

are we to believe that you didn't write this in a different sequence then cut it up, toss it in the air and put it back together ala Sparky Dashforth?

So good to find someone who also values Barth's contribution to understanding the human condition