[Nick McRae]

Paula it's a 'you had to be there' thing, and what happens when you mix night feeding a 1 year old and poetry forums. I'm being equally cryptic, aren't I?

Cally, I have to ask, do you have a book?

[Yves S L]

Hello Cally,

Musicians often say that the music is in the silences, and here the music is in the spaces.

Phrasing, phrasing, it's all about phrasing.

Yeah.

[Cally Conan-Davies]

Hi Paula! Thank you for perservering, and for your thorough attempt to explain your lostness. You've actually connected to the heart of the poem in your lostness. I think the so-called 'speaker' of the poem is exploring a feeling of lostness. Actually, I look to lose myself through writing poems. 'Get lost' is practically a motto of mine. It's the solution to the need for anwers or explanations.

You indentify a gamut of feeling from fear to hope to exuberance, and yes! These are all in the swirl! Jim used the word that comes to my mind for this method: "kaleidoscope-like". I think that's how my 'mind' works; kaleidoscopically.

I hope that a reader can turn the poem one way . . . turn it the other way, and see something different. And try to hold it so that neither vision dominates.

I suppose, for me, a poem is not a puzzle to solve. Clarity is not synonymous with solution. My task as a poet is to write absolutely clearly about what happens when words utterly fail.
The impulse behind my work is not thought or ideas, but lyric.
I truly believe that poems begin where thought ends.
I think that wanting to have something to say is deadly to poetry.

When we simply can't speak anymore, that's what poetry is for. This is where it begins. The compulsion is some inner music.

I'm always riding the shift—shift of focus, shift of structure, shift between phrases, shift between lines.

I'm feeling for the same constantly shifting currents and cross currents I find in the physical world. I love the sound of two words clashing.

I'm an associative thinker rather than a logical one.

And I know that the poem is not the words. The poem happens in the spaces, where the words are not, but their sounds continue to resonate and weave.
I'm trying to make resonance, not meaning in any literal sense.

Poetic language undermines surface language. Poetry is under-mining. At its best, forces from deep within are released by a lyric necessity. I'm constantly trying to break out of my own life into life itself.

The hoped-for result is nothing less than transformation.

And none of this is to say that this particular poem succeeds. I don't know if it does. I may never know.

I'm not even sure if the poem is what it wants to be yet. I rarely feel satisfied with a finished feeling.

Please don't feel bad!! Never feel bad if you don't like a poem. Not all styles are for all readers!! Read another poem!

Actually, you read so much into the poem that's wonderful, and ALL there! Maybe you're looking for a resolution, for all the feelings to bind together. But I can't pull them into a manageable shape. Too many contradictions and tensions. And the moment I try to be sure and secure, a big wind and another shift. Nothing stays still.

What you've given me in your reading has been enormously helpful. I am so grateful for your time!!


Hi Nick! Hope you're well! No book.


Hi Yves!!! YES. The poetry is in the spaces. YES. And "Phrasing, phrasing, it's all about phrasing". This is something I say all the time!! I write in phrases, with embodied emboldened silences inbetween . . . THANK YOU!!


I'm still swimming around this one. Nothing settled yet . . . I love this state!! Will let you know if anything happens!


Cally

[R. Nemo Hill]

When don't turns to dew.

Nemo

[Yves S L]

We riffing? Then we are riffing!

When won't turns to rue.

[mignon ledgard]

Dear Cally,

So much has been said in praise, and that’s all I have for your beautiful and touching art.

This time, it’s a brief stop to thank you for your trust in your readers, as you leave out capital letters and give the space to navigate at our own pace.

I hope the reader who suggested that capital letters be added won’t take offense. But I had read it and floated with it before the caps and now they stop me before I even begin to read. Each cap is also a full stop, due to the double spaces, which I love. It has become a bumpy reading from which I no longer derive the pleasure that opens my mind to more assimilation of all that continues to appear, as your poems usually do. I hope you will reconsider..

After the second visit, I noticed a turn at the end of the poem. The knight swapping his hood took me to different places, one pause was the joke, another, psychology that uses the knight’s move in the game of chess to define a child’s way of thinking: lateral. The surprise, the unexpected. Your poems are this surprise and the unexpected becomes the expected. I would need more quiet time to be able to verbalize. All good.

Shamelessly selfish,
and so good to see you posting!
~ mignon

[Paula Fernandez]

Cally--
I'm really very grateful for your lengthy response to my post on this poem. You've relieved my mind that maybe I'm not just a terrible reader. I think the kaleidoscope metaphor is very helpful here to re-frame what's happening when reading certain kinds of poetry. Of course, I don't think I can stop meaning-making in the presence of textual art. Words have meanings after all, and so we try to make sense of things. But I can certainly sit with ambiguity if that ambiguity is the very meaning intended. I did find many of your lines quite resonant and beautiful and I love the spacing. I think I quite like the poem now that I don't feel the need to understand it. Thank you so much for your perspective on writing poetry. It opens me.

[Cally Conan-Davies]

Thank you, Mignon! For your very kind words, and for making me re-think/re-see the inital caps. As you'll see in my revision, I've gone back to small letters. In this instance, you're right that the words and lines need to float. The capitals feel too forceful, or emphatic, to me now. Many thanks for reading, and for always encouraging me!!

Hi Paula! The poem has gone through some substantial revision as all the comments simmered in the pot. And the poem kept calling. You know, often it feels to me like the poem is the teacher and the poet is the student. I think I've been learning from poems all my life, and never moreso than from the ones I'm writing!

Revision posted.

My gratitude to all!!

Cally

[Mary Meriam]

Dink Derigideroo, at first I wanted initial caps and less space between lines. That was before I saw your revision, which is worlds livelier and works with lowercase and spaces. Somehow you've made each line a poem in itself, so the spaces are necessary. These are my favorite lines - I feel such life in them!

the runes of the runneling rain

and the hunch of the half-starved possum

gnawing the blackberry canes

[Siham Karami]

Calligraphy! Revision 2 is absolutely AMAZING. All the elements now come together. It’s like the poem has to make its own sense to come fully alive. Sometimes with me a poem sits dormant in some unknown state until maybe years later (just had one of those tonight!) and suddenly I see what was wrong and it all comes together. Sometimes it’s only a single line, a few words, that make all the difference. So to have come up with those perfectly wild lines. Something about the unexpected, the wild card, the oddity, it’s essential for life in poems and everything else, I suppose. An oddity that somehow fits. In this case the lack of caps is huge. And the spacing. The ending. A toast to you!
Xoxo —>