[Newspoetry] feedback on draft

[gillespie william k]

On Mon, 16 Aug 1999, Sam Patterson wrote:

> Weekend morning show
> 
> sunday mornings used to mean
> coffee and crepes with brown sugar
> and at ten your mother the phone

I like that I can't tell whether this means that my mother is a telephone.

> 
> then the newspaper
> read slowly, gourging

gorging?

> at this fountian of closure

fountain? Gorging at a fountain of closure? I like the fountain of closure
better than I like gorging at a fountain. I don't picture this person
reading the paper as
gorging at a fountain, like in a public park like West Side Park.
Drinking the water. A glut. Can you picture that? Pretty disgusting
isn't it? Were they gorging on the crepes? No, they ate
slowly with measured bites, savoring the relaxed Sunday morning. Same with
the paper. 

When does a fountain have closure?

> history: hiroshima "anniversary" the radio once said

This line has enjambments within itself.

> "the united states dropped the world's first atomic bomb on  Hiroshima,
> a military base"
> 
> this odd frame that blocks most of the window, painted

I've always been a big fan of this line. I like the frame that blocks the
window. That is odd, isn't it?

> clousred

closured?
> 
> epistemological whiteout
> 
Oh shit, one of those words - ontological, epistomological, heuristic,
hermeneutic - that I can't for the life of me remember what it means no
matter how many times I look it up. 

> delete that interpretation
> 
> dropped the first atomic bomb-pop on Hiroshima a hot dog stand
> 
This line is like a Warhol in the Louvre.

> dropped the /  on / our own boys / friendly  /fire swept through / a
> mistake/ the embassy / today/ the united states / news agencies/
> dropped  / an artificial / perspective  / on their readers/ our boys  /
> your neighbors/  the TV Suppliers/
> 
I like that the slashes distract me so that I don't really read the words.
I like the words too.

> this morning the fog is thick, the ships are invisible off shore, I
> nervously read the weather report, skies clearing by evening, heavy
> bombing expected.

It feels good, just sitting here, eating crepes and brown sugar with my
mother the telephone.

> 
> If I had an advanced guidance system.
> 
(or a hammer)

> my education cost much less than a missile.
> 
A Tomohawk cruise missile is, I believe, approximately a million dollars.
Tuition is probably steep in Diego, but I think your math works out.

> Pat Robertson is shot in the head by the pope after suggesting America
> adopt a policy of assassinating world leaders it does not like.
>
This line functions as a compass and as a bottle opener.
 
> books pulled by ones from the shelf and pilled around the house:

piled? I like "pulled by ones."

> poetry, anthologies, collections of essays, a looming pile of borrowed
> promising notes and reasons and challenges and reminders.  where has the
> TV gone to?

I can't decide whether this is an image or a metaphor. Or a trope. What's
a trope anyway? I forget.

> 
> to the tune
> of get me out of here
> 
These two stanzas pivot on the "to," which changes meaning, creating a
thin illusion of continuity. I don't know get me out of here.

> I know your in morocco and I wonder if your mother calls at ten
> 
you're? She cannot. Alas, my mother is a telephone.

> no ideas but in facts
> no facts but in circumstance
> no circumstance but in context
> no ideas but in context

I'm going to have to think that over. Smartguy.

> 
> moving from book to book poem to poem, moving boarders to Paterson, to
> Writing talks, to Contents dream, moving in tight circles
> 
So I know that Paterson and Writing Talks are books. Oh yeah, so is
Content's Dream. So we know which school of poetry you belong to. And
write to too, apparently, since you're just titledropping without
explication.

> to Against forgetting a high-water mark
> 
Yeah. It's a good anthology. But if I read this poem and didn't know
Against Forgetting was an anthology of 20th Century Poetry of Witness
edited by Carolyn Forche and then years later discovered that it was, I'd
be pissed that you withheld what you were talking about.

So I think you should change this part of the poem to "Go read/_Against
Forgetting_/It's a great book/by Carolyn Forche." Some things are
important. You gotta have a good book when you're eatin' them crepes.

> purgatory is any place people are stuck
> 
> that which binds them there may not be physical
> 
I guess I'm wondering, if that which binds them there *were* physical,
what are we talking? Ball and chain? Manacles? 

Just doing my job.
Thanks for the pome.
Let me know if I can put it on the internet.
> 
> 
> 
> 
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