Lordy, lordy. You said on the phone that you wanted To be with someone unpatriotic for the Fourth, I can oblige, Friend, I can oblige. I've missed you, the chime of your voice Preserved in thin British against the lack of maples in my upstate. I'll be home, friend, I'll be home starting 9:47 Saturday night, When the evening settles into the thin thrall I sensed growing up, Knowing I should be out, I should be making a fuss, causing a ruckus, But I sat in, holding my breath against the classical NPR, Reading something which gave me an intellectual thrill, Something self-stroked: Jane Eyre, or when I was feeling Particularly trashy, Emma. This is what we will be doing next week: Walking along the algaed canal, watching wrappers float In the sick, sweet green. I am prepared to offer you A dinner at the greek place up the road (I am always ready For the expenditure. Anything instead of paying the veterinary bill.) This is what we will be doing next week: remembering one real night Where you and I and that other boy sat, potentialed, on a picnic table In the mindless sweet green of the library grass, and didn't fuck up. This is what I will be doing next week: escaping the opera of falling, The sickness of my sickness. Just a few days, friend, just a few days. This is what you will be doing next week: displaying your scars, The crust of healing, the potential of rip gone from the wounds. Envy, friend, envy falls along the roadside as we inevitably wrinkle. I am looking forward to the sun, the rungs of history, any flat future.
Accourding to Heather Starr: From: hstarr@dept.english.upenn.edu (Heather Starr) Date: Fri, 2 Jul 1999 13:54:27 -0400 (EDT) Wow, Hannah, really enjoyed reading this. Enjoyed the questioning of -How To Be- on the Fourth of July, and love the line "Where you and I and that other boy sat, potentialed, on a picnic table" At the end it feels like there's so much more you're on the tip of getting into. "Envy, friend, envy" and I wonder about all that you might be alluding to. Thanks for sharing it.
Accourding to Mike Magee: From: mmagee@dept.english.upenn.edu (Michael Magee) Date: Mon, 5 Jul 1999 14:47:03 -0400 (EDT) Hannah, in this poem, and in the one you sent previously, your ear for lavishly piled phrases is enticing - I like the density, the music. There's a few places I get caught up which I thought I'd mention for what they're worth (and, while I'm at it: though I liked the1st poem generally, the use of "friend" came off as a bit mannered to me and, in any event, I wouldn't use quite so many.) So: while I'm not generally bothered by pathetic fallacies - which I think can be useful, interesting, funny, etc, "the blue sky laughed..." seems to too-unconsciously ascribe that action to the sky without any sense of detail: this is one of those cases when a modernist skepticism like Pound's can be pretty useful, and one can hear Pound saying, HOW did the sky laugh? DOES the sky LAUGH? On another front, I wonder about the symbolism involved in "ancient dark wetness" and "slave colonies of protozoa" - is the speaker involving her/himself in a kind of primitivism here? If so, to what end and at what cost? Those would be things that would concern me if it was my poem. Once you have "slave colonies," even as metaphor (or, *especially* as metaphor) you have a whole political subtext that needs addressin'. The line "(All is dropped before thought passes the dura-mater.)" seems potentially very interesting in this regard. Can we take it as the speaker disavowing the metaphor-making which has taken place previously? I like that possibility and might try to somehow get further into its fabric. I'm also struck by the halting use of colons which works very nicely and might be integrated more specifically in terms of this issue of politics/metaphor, personal-description/symbolic-responsibility, that type of thing. Anyway, hope this makes a smidgeon of sense. Liked the poems. -m.