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      bald lips to consummation

      in the lust

      of vividry

      and elán vital of transmutation

      pressing painful birth into a wilder universe

      part and part and part and intimation

      timbreling into

      completion

      ii

      A thousand secret selves clamor

      for carved ears,

      a thousand altérnate selves,

      elementals recording what is/seems and was

      and what may be—

      a thousand pale prospective nightmares

      dreams

      expulsive energies define

      and

      redefine into infinity

      iii

      A thousand deaths thrive here

      a thousand

      apparitional

      cheddar-scaled goldfish

      floating in blue tepid water and

      cannibalizing

      bloated skull and unzipped spine

      of one that once was of their own kind

      when it still lived—

      but failed

      transmutation

      became

      consummation

      rocking on aquarial blue-plastic coated stones

      iv

      A thousand children sleep soundly

      in typic beds—

      progeny of imagery,

      heirs of rhythms

      potentialities

      unenfleshed and ripening

      tattering on weak

      iambs to dream

      mortality

      and pungent smells

      of

      swollen ripeness

      pressed

      in black arc-lines

      against a thousand

      stained sheets

      STRINGING BUTTONS

      Stringing buttons—hunched on the worn pine floor,

      Its planks velvet smooth from half-century

      Of hands scrubbing, polishing—musty air

      Warm with subtle gossip, whispered words we

      Youngsters ignored.... We strung buttons on hanks

      Of time-grayed cotton-thread and squabbled for

      Favorites: foil-backed glass; glossy jet, ink-

      Black-deep; mock turquoise; hand-cut bone, smooth, clear—

      While hour on hour grandmothers stitched staid quilts,

      Wove intricate lines with white cotton strands

      Through patterns pieced from scraps—old aprons, shirts

      Sunday dresses faded and worn breath-thin;

      Our cotton threads coiled in the button box—

      We never cared that none had end-thread knots.

      VULTURE

      Or perhaps vulture

      (as my son avers

      although he reclined

      half-sleeping when

      the black shadow

      rose, soused

      as if to clutch

      with careful claw

      my small Ford,

      and disappeared

      above the tunnel’s

      mouth)—flash

      of red-on-black

      glint of hooked

      beak but mostly

      bulk and blackly

      ominous shade

      whispers death

      and rises as I pass

      into darkness

      Discussion questions:

      1. What principles govern lineation in each poem? How effective are those principles in light of the final poem?

      2. In which poem does the poet more fully seem to control where and/or when lines begin and end?

      3. Is the chosen form appropriate for each poem?

      Line length intensifies poetic effects in many ways. Compare the following pas­sages:

      Freedom of the mind requires not only, or not even especially, the ab­sence of legal constraints but the pres­ence of alternative thoughts.

      Just to say thank you to the one who laid a pair of pruning shears open on my driveway yesterday; I shall use them on the roses and save my four new tires.

      Is there anything particularly “poetic” about either (excepting for the moment the homage to William Carlos Williams im­plicit in the second)? Which of the two sounds less like poetry, more like prose?

      When the lines break into meaningful sub-units—poetic “lines”—the impact of each becomes more apparent. Even a prose passage can attain to some­thing like poetic emphasis:

      FREEDOM OF THE MIND

      requires

      not only,

      or not even especially,

      the absence

      of legal constraints

      but

      the presence

      of alternative thoughts.

      — “quoted” from Allan Bloom,

      The Closing of the American Mind

      JUST TO SAY

      thank you

      to

      the one

      who laid a pair

      of pruning

      shears

      open on

      my driveway

      yesterday;

      I shall use

      them

      on the roses

      and save

      my four

      new tires.

      Discussion: Which seems more effective as poetry? How else could the original passages be divided to create “poetry”?

      EMOTION AND INTELLECT IN POETRY

      For a few pages, I would like to re-don my professorial cap (you know, the square one with the tassel) and posit two poles from which poetry may start: emotion and intellect. There are, of course, many other ways to discuss poetics, but these two seem at the moment most relevant. But before the discussion, two assertions:

      Neither approach is right.

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