I tried to return here sooner but my physical therapy session yesterday rocked my day and it is still shifting around this morning. I know the work the physical therapist is doing is necessary, but I swear I caught a glint of evil in her eye as she pressed my poor damaged knee against the table, oblivious to my sobs and whimpers.
I've never had this experience of commenting on a poem dedicated to me. It's an honor, Cameron.
I see this as a response, or at least associated with, my poem on non-met. This poem has pushed me to look more closely at that one, to attempt to determine what I've written, because I am convinced it's often the things we don't realize we've said that are the best. Maybe that is a poem about someone searching for an identity who, at the end of a long search, is still not having any luck. Maybe if he flies apart it will be among the planets, but the planets are just as lost, worshipping the spin of their own existence. Although it was suggested the statue was a slur on people's religion, it is actually an admission he will never be that saint, turned from the sea.
OK. That's weird. Deconstructing my own poem and knowing my interpretation may be wrong. But I see something similar, if better accomplished, going on here. Identity after identity is tried on and discarded until the one character that deserves an initial cap emerges--the Holy Fool. He isn't discovered by work and experiments. He emerges when the effort is done.
I'm not certain that reading is the right one. Cameron's poems are always open to various readings, which is why they are intriguing. There's always a journey but you know from the outset the journey will be worth it. I'm seeing this poem through the prism of my poem and find a similar struggle, look, attempt here. The work is necessary to learn, probably not for the first time, that the work isn't necessary. It may be the problem. Or, to be Russian about it, the only way to escape the suffering is to stop suffering.
To say suffering is too much. I'm having fun.
. . . nor am I the hill or the hill's dazzled crop
of scrub-grass I've crawled on: as if I might root
as if I'm a blank that the rain can't define
since nothing makes nothing
This reads as though it was written quickly. If so, I recommend doing this more. It feels as though you've lifted the top of a pot that bears more stirring.
Good poem, Cameron, and thank you.
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