increments of association

The Whip

I spent a night turning in bed,
my love was a feather, a flat

sleeping thing. She was
very white

and quiet, and above us on
the roof, there was another woman I

also loved, had
addressed myself to in

a fit she
returned. That

encompasses it. But now I was
lonely, I yelled,

but what is that? Ugh,
she said, beside me, she put

her hand on
my back, for which act

I think to say this
wrongly.
-Roberty Creeley


Wrong.

On creating value: "usage coheres value. Tradition is an aspect of what anyone is now thinking - not what someone once thought." RC.
Anything can have currency of value as long as it is in use. We are free, and our thoughts are participating in tradition. Living creates value. This veil of soul making I am doing cannot be described. There is no description outside of the actual doing of making. There is no closure to the moments. I love poetry that asserts such, as does The Whip. Creeley is in the making of image and forcing us to perceive his perception: by line breaks, without being retrospective, his speech patterns. He is creating tradition by defying description; assertion of one man by one man. Pound wrote, "Verse consists of a constant and a variant..." Any element we choose might be made the stable, recurrent event, and that any other might be let to go "hog wild." This form could prove "a center around which, not a box within which, every item..."

I found this old email. I have used this quote often, "the truly smartest people are indeed the ones who know how much they don't know." I had forgotten where that mental furniture had come from. Thank you Claudia. 

Comments

Popular Posts