17 jul 2004

WITHOUT FOLLOWS

Light snow falling into this room's
prospect changes
the weight of nothing

As the trees lodge still
I can type them, nearly

As my head moves solid
in its whim rest of flake

The room has turned to
a populous pastnoon, trees

Twigs that chase brain
to a network of cracks

Nothing rises, but
nothing, situate

Blocks of bark
shocks of the sky

In greater brain's stalling
the hoarding of reasons
or is it some light has fallen?

--Clark Coolidge

This poem illustrates some of what I was talking about yesterday. Coolidge simply (not so simply!)
has a fantastic ear: "Twigs that chase brain / to a network of cracks." I am seriously envious. It's
one thing to master an established form, quite another to actually invent prosodically. Those bursts of
repeated accents: "TREES LODGE STILL" or "PASTNOON TREES // TWIGS." What rhythmic dynamism!

There's some Creeley influence here, maybe. But Creeley's rhythm patterns are quite different:

"However far
I'd gone
it was still
where it had all begun"

No hay comentarios: