- I've been reading and rereading a few dozen short poems, trying to figure out how they might cohere into a package that feels like more than just a stack of poems. That shed light on neighboring poems, or at least share a developing mood, that move in some direction and get somewhere by the end, even if that end is more suggestive than tangible. It's not easy to see how such a thing is possible. Some kind of meaningful sequence.#
- Good bands make albums that sometimes seem to cohere, and to advance from song to song in a not arbitrary way. It must be possible. But there's no manual, as far as I know. Look at side one of Abbey Road--in what sense does that cohere? Side two is different, but it's hard to explain why this is so.#
- Rereading the poems is has been eye-opening. There's a little poem, six lines, about how we can probably count on a sheaf of papers handed down to us to contain something false, essentially a lie passed down to us. Two and a half lines for that idea. Then the proposal that the lies present in every stack of documents must drive some people over the edge, the proposal that for this reason over time people have burned barns and smashed plows out of long-simmering frustration turned to powerless rage. Then a line and a half left to suggest that the poems before you now will also contain falsehoods, so be on your guard.#
- So that's the movement of the poem. On rereading I notice that it contains what I'm now thinking of as a rupture of the social order. The façade of social order, the lies woven into the smooth façade, and the rupture the lies provoke from the powerlessness of the people.#
- So now I'm looking at the other poems. None of them are about lies in manuscripts, none of them are about uprisings and burning barns. But maybe some of them are about the lies in the calm façade, maybe some of them are about the occasional ruptures of social order.#
- If I can find these, I might start to have poems that could become more interesting when placed near each other in a sequence. To make a quick example, there's a handful of these six-line poem that are, one way or another, about individuals who can't manage as well as they might like to assert their protest against unjust circumstances. For the moment I see those as being related to the more blatant breakthrough, destructive and self-destructive thought it is, of burning the barn. So maybe the sequence of poems is going to be, in part, about whether and how people manage to assert their own voices in society. Not sure, but that's a more concrete idea than what I had a day ago, which was next to nothing. Fingers crossed going forward.#
- I've been reading and rereading a few dozen short poems, trying to figure out how they might cohere into a package that feels like more than just a stack of poems. That shed light on neighboring poems, or at least share a developing mood, that move in some direction and get somewhere by the end, even if that end is more suggestive than tangible. It's not easy to see how such a thing is possible. Some kind of meaningful sequence.#
- Good bands make albums that sometimes seem to cohere, and to advance from song to song in a not arbitrary way. It must be possible. But there's no manual, as far as I know. Look at side one of Abbey Road--in what sense does that cohere? Side two is different, but it's hard to explain why this is so.#
- Rereading the poems is has been eye-opening. There's a little poem, six lines, about how we can probably count on a sheaf of papers handed down to us to contain something false, essentially a lie passed down to us. Two and a half lines for that idea. Then the proposal that the lies present in every stack of documents must drive some people over the edge, the proposal that for this reason over time people have burned barns and smashed plows out of long-simmering frustration turned to powerless rage. Then a line and a half left to suggest that the poems before you now will also contain falsehoods, so be on your guard.#
- So that's the movement of the poem. On rereading I notice that it contains what I'm now thinking of as a rupture of the social order. The façade of social order, the lies woven into the smooth façade, and the rupture the lies provoke from the powerlessness of the people.#
- So now I'm looking at the other poems. None of them are about lies in manuscripts, none of them are about uprisings and burning barns. But maybe some of them are about the lies in the calm façade, maybe some of them are about the occasional ruptures of social order.#
- If I can find these, I might start to have poems that could become more interesting when placed near each other in a sequence. To make a quick example, there's a handful of these six-line poem that are, one way or another, about individuals who can't manage as well as they might like to assert their protest against unjust circumstances. For the moment I see those as being related to the more blatant breakthrough, destructive and self-destructive thought it is, of burning the barn. So maybe the sequence of poems is going to be, in part, about whether and how people manage to assert their own voices in society. Not sure, but that's a more concrete idea than what I had a day ago, which was next to nothing. Fingers crossed going forward.#