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18 ago 2007

A line came to me last night

"No typographer is an ironist.'

I have no idea what that means. This morning i changed it to

"Every typographer is an ironist."

(You know you're in trouble if you can't decide between two lines that mean the oppoite. Then you know you are "not even wrong.")

Then

"Every calligrapher is an ironist / 'that common language to unravel'"

Then, "The unsure calligrapher is not / good for herself." That would be a very good line if it weren't a Creeley rip-off. It's the part of the poem after the first line that usually gives me problems. I want every line to have that first-line quality of being "given."

7 comentarios:

  1. What do you think about Lorca's "song of the barren orange tree?"

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  2. Nothing wrong with one-line poems.

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  3. Nothing wrong with them, but I'd like to go beyond one-liners.

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  4. Why the interest in that particular Lorca poem? I like it fine myself.

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  5. Every fine poem is first and foremost fine because it mysteriously grips you. All the other reasons you could find in Lorca literary commentary.

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  6. I woke up this morning with this half-line in my head:

    Finding their language broken . . .

    Now I just have to figure out who "they" are.

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  7. I relate there. Tho normally I have merely to fix a few prosecuting articles, 'is an' the like. Then my friends love me.

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