The poem describes the first evidence of plants coming to life in Spring as if something horrible were happening. Certain distressing events are soon referred to, such as a poor woman receiving a foreclosure notice, just as the school bus drops off her children after school, in a way that is completely unexpected. An essay starts at the far right upper corner of the sheet about Louis McNiece's remarks about poetry, which ends with the statement that his reference to ambiguity does not alter our understanding of the poem, but the fact is that ambiguity itself is the meaning of the poem. How this relates to the poem we are given on the left side of the page is not at all clear, though with some effort of interpretation, having enough to go on in McNiece's remarks, we could surely come up with something convincing. But I'm too lazy to try to venture my remarks in this direction. My question is: Since Jorie Graham tends to divide her poems by typographical means into two apposing parts, is this new unexpected addition of this long column about McNiece on the right hand side of the page an extension of her earlier format using an apposing text paginated without explanation? It may be related, and if so, in a very oblique way that one could never be sure of. It's a peculiar yet powerful poem.
Copyright 2011 by Nicholas Van Vactor, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.
3 comments:
I ask myself what is wrong with the contemporary poetry and I think I know the answer. The majority of the poets have stopped to have a contact with the ordinary people. They live in a bubble in which they meet people like themselves. poetry is empty and boring and doomed to disappear very soon. What kind of life do they have, do they have feelings at all? Empty words without feelings sound like Hollywood movies.Why not use numbers instead?
The poem "Dialog" is like a car engine which can go for a minute of for hours and one would not notice any difference.Ten of fifty verses make the same because the poet has nothing important to say.
She's a difficult poet. One needs to have a real background in literature to get what's there in the poem.
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