This is fantastic news! I've been translating a lot of Greek poems lately, and pondering where to send the ones I think are best. Now I know.
"Die" seems to violate this mini-manifesto in Paterson's interview:
Quote:
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I still quaintly define poems as verbal units with a deep, overdetermined internal coherence of form, sound, and meaning. Writing that kind of poem used to be like trying to make a watch that would run for centuries. Writing a poem as it is currently defined is more like decorating: You pick a vibe, choose the appropriate wallpaper, get out your tchotchke shaker, and fill the mantelpieces with random shit, bits of recognition comedy, and tokens of your tribal allegiance.
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Maybe it's meant to be a pastiche of a modern poem? Vibe, check. Random shit, check. I'm guessing that the randomness and the references to aleatory uncertainties have something to do with the "die" of the title. I'm not going to watch the Marie Curie movie to see what blackboard scribble is being referred to as "Perot's spokes" — a phrase with two hits on Google, one of which is this poem. Maybe the sun referenced in the French epigraph has spokes, too.
Personally, I think it's no better or worse than most other poems I don't get (which is, to be frank, most poems).