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In Love, His Grammar Grew
In Love, His Grammar Grew
In love, his grammar grew
rich with intensifiers, and adverbs fell
madly from the sky like pheasants
for the peasantry, and he, as sated
as they were, lolled under shade trees
until roused by moonlight
and the beautiful fraternal twins
and and but. Oh that was when
he knew he couldn’t resist
a conjunction of any kind.
One said accumulate, the other
was a doubter who loved the wind
and the mind that cleans up after it.
For love
he wanted to break all the rules,
light a candle behind a sentence
named Sheila, always running on
and wishing to be stopped
by the hard button of a period.
Sometimes, in desperation, he’d look
toward a mannequin or a window dresser
with a penchant for parsing.
But mostly he wanted you, Sheila,
and the adjectives that could precede
and change you: bluesy, fly-by-night,
queen of all that is and might be.
Assia Djebar, from Fantasia: An Algerian Cavalcade
“To write confronting love…The word is a torch; to be held up in front of the wall of separation or withdrawl…To describe the other’s face, to fix his image, to continue to believe in his presence, in the miracle he performs…
Rejecting all lyricism…every metaphor seems a wretched ruse, an approximation and a weakness.”
“My sole ambition in writing is constantly to travel to fresh pastures and replenish my water skins with an inexhaustible silence.”
wild goose chase
Last night I dreamed that I was unpacking my bags, at the end of my upcoming journey, talking with the one that inspired me to make the trip. We were looking over a brochure for recreational space travel, and having a nonchalant conversation about doing it. I’m not sure if that means things I once considered nearly impossible are actually quite accessible, or if that means I’m severely underestimating the elusive nature of what I desire.
Les Balayeurs Du Désert - Decollage
I’ve learned to clip my wings
And soften my ways
I’ve learned
These are ordinary things
like you’d estimate, just average
But evidently she does not agree
like you’d estimate, just average
But I’ve learned to clip my wings
And soften my ways
Seoul at night, as seen from Myogaksa templa
I only read to read my life
and was never able to develop an academic sense of detachment when approaching fiction. Hugh Prather writes, “no matter what you talk about, you are talking about yourself.” I read in the same way.
unfortunately, I’ve learned my summer is completely vincible
“In the depth of winter, I finally learned that within me there lay an invincible summer.”—
Albert Camus
(via opticaldelusion-deactivated2012)
Poetry glut, choosing a ghost companion
In The Poetry Lesson, Andrei Codrescu requires that his Intro to Poetry Writing Students adopt a “ghost companion”, a poet whose life and work the student is to research intensively. He picks them somewhat arbitrarily, with more than a touch of sadism, pairing students with whichever poet has a perspective most likely to disturb and confound the newbie. He narrows the selection by restricting students to those poets which share their last initial with the student, then allows them to choose between some suggestions. I’m doing something of the sort myself, with the aide The Poetry Foundation’s selection Tool.
Seeking:
Female Poets, with either K or P names, who were born— or died—between the years 1971 through the present, and are form the Southern US.
Anyone that is cross-referenced enough on those lists might just be the one. I’m not committed to anything but sharing gender with my ghost companion. The other criteria are useful just as filters. Geographic considerations might be productive, and as for the dates, I’m not sure if I want a contemporary or an elder. Maybe one of each.
