Quote:
Originally Posted by Carl Copeland
James, this reminds me of Stevens in being philosophical with some exotic fauna sprinkled in to save it from abstraction. I happen to love Stevens, but it’s more for his language than for his philosophy, which I’ve never gotten my head quite around. I enjoyed the dazzling wordplay of your previous two poems, but here you’re playing up the philosophical with a sparer, almost syllogistic style. Anyway, I’m just trying to sound intelligent while admitting that the poem is still dark inside for me. I’ll keep feeling around for the light switch.
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Carl's assessment is beautifully put and I have the same impressions (though I don't know Stevens' poetry). I don't know if it's the short lines that prevent me from finding my footing or the constant shifting from one image to the next that prevents it from cohering in my rather slow-footed mind.
I thought maybe it could be relineated into couplets to help delineate the barrage of imagery in the poem. Something like:
Asleep in its meat the tiger catches
a few important facts here redacted.
Instead we turn to facticity itself
which via tiger should be understood
I wish the title gave me more.
But I could be way off... Like Carl, I'm groping around for a light switch.
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