[published in hole #3 (pp. 40-42)]
Some of my friends are contented to plot the little movements of their minds. They think poetry is an art.
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If somebody has written some poems and you read some of them you can tell pretty much right away whether they concentrated on the poesie or the life.
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There is something pathological about the usual attacahments towards towards words but writing at its best has to do with doing without them.
Louis Cabri comments: "To what does 'them' refer? Is it that 'writing at its best has to do with doing without' the 'usual attachments towards words,' or in a zen-like paradox, doing without words themselves? If the former is true, then Davies' ... work remains connected by a modernist impulse to 'free' words of their everyday affects, their 'usual' and 'pathological' attachments. If the latter, then Davies pushes towards internal limits of dialogue without writing, limits that establish zen-like balance between art and life, and introduce to writing the role of maintaining the psychic health. The larger implications of these lines...is that some of [Davies'] poet-friends follow a modernist impulse to make language new at the expense of a goal of 'healthful' living...."