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Beginning to Be Unfinished
Posted by: petersz (69.181.22.---)
Date: January 04, 2022 03:44PM

Beginning to Be Unfinished

Shape, line, form,
Dying plants and biography…
What is hidden in a poem?

The lines come from yesterday,
Measured in confusion.
Someone else’s this time.

Can you see the empty room?
The windows closed,
The papers fade away.
Hear the radio turned down, not off.

Every poem a mood, a mode,
A way into human temperament,
Into the matrix of language…
Particular, historic.

San Francisco 2009,
Sunday morning before the blues.
The warmth of my own body
After a bath,
The ocean in my ears
Before her voice.

Take another sip of coffee.
Listen to the radiator.
Make no footnotes.
Return to the easel.


Re: Beginning to Be Unfinished
Posted by: lifeisbutadream (86.108.3.---)
Date: January 04, 2022 04:03PM

I enjoyed this tremendously , Peter, from "beginning" to its "Unfinshed" end!

K.Q.


Re: Beginning to Be Unfinished
Posted by: JohnnyBoy (24.189.156.---)
Date: January 04, 2022 06:42PM

Someone peeled an orange in the middle of the parking lot

I'm just sayin'


Re: Beginning to Be Unfinished
Posted by: petersz (69.181.22.---)
Date: January 04, 2022 11:56PM

Thanks both for visiting and commenting, I think.

amo,

Peter

Johnny, I like your particular here.


Re: Beginning to Be Unfinished
Posted by: Merc (75.208.75.---)
Date: January 24, 2022 11:35PM

SFO 2009 has to be less trouble than SFO 1906. If it is unfinished, how do you know how long it's gonna be? Remember, you can stay in front of a firing squad until someone says "fire".
I think the medicine has an effect that I hadn't noticed until I tried to type sensible like, perhaps I should not drive until the a.m.


Re: Beginning to Be Unfinished
Posted by: petersz (69.181.22.---)
Date: January 25, 2022 12:29AM

Ironically, Merc, the brain doctor told me yesterday, she was going to make it possible for the state to keep me from driving, with one word, which I will not repeat, lest I add to her dark magic, knowing the power of repeating a word out loud.

Cheers,

Peter


p.s.,

It never seems to me that the end of the runway is the end of the flight.


Re: Beginning to Be Unfinished
Posted by: Merc (75.208.62.---)
Date: January 25, 2022 10:55AM

People are convicted with forenics, and sentenced to death with words. My least favorite word is cancer.
Don't care much for puce either, but that is a personal opinion.


Re: Beginning to Be Unfinished
Posted by: aaron (71.193.157.---)
Date: January 25, 2022 12:15PM

Peter, I really like this. Perhaps you could tell me a little more about it?


Re: Beginning to Be Unfinished
Posted by: petersz (69.181.22.---)
Date: January 25, 2022 05:43PM

Aaron,

Shape, line, form,
Dying plants and biography…
What is hidden in a poem?

--I am always meditating on what can be put into a poem, what a poem is made of....

And I am fascinated that poems are indirect expressions of our experience, not direct expressions, hence 'hidden'...I am not a fan of simple biography as a source of a poem, though I refuse to exclude any source....

The lines come from yesterday,
Measured in confusion.
Someone else’s this time.

Mr Pound tutor in undergraduate school, Ann E. Berthoff, ['forming thinking writing: The Composing Imagination'] used to always direct me toward what she called 'creative confusion,''mess' that precedes orderly creativity.

Can you see the empty room?
The windows closed,
The papers fade away.
Hear the radio turned down, not off.

--This is the imaginary setting for the meditation.


Every poem a mood, a mode,
A way into human temperament,
Into the matrix of language…
Particular, historic.

--Here is the greater context for poetry: language and history --that lets every poem reach beyond the personal, the individual poet's experiencee, through the roots of language -- at least as far in English to the Indo-European proto-language -- that is all available through the least word, etc.

San Francisco 2009,
Sunday morning before the blues.
The warmth of my own body
After a bath,
The ocean in my ears
Before her voice.

Here we are brought right back into the poet's personal, particular situation, before he speaks to his friend on the phone in the morning.

Take another sip of coffee.
Listen to the radiator.
Make no footnotes.
Return to the easel.

--And we end with the metaphorical:

Return to the easel

The easel is the location, the place, IN THE IMAGINATION, whether there is an easel in my room or not...it represents the imaginative space, the matrix, out of which creativity itself originates, not merely the world of the poet, the place he goes to create.

I will leave the title for you to fill in with your meaning.

I hope this is a little help, Aaron,

amo,

Peter


Re: Beginning to Be Unfinished
Posted by: Steevo (69.19.14.---)
Date: January 26, 2022 12:15AM

Nice bit of picture painting. I like the teaching and insight too Peter. You are generous man.

As to the title. Too many years ago I worked in a rural woodworking factory. The place where the real people worked in that day. Old Eugene from Alabama was a mentor to the younger guys, and his favorite line when he would walk behind my machine and see I was finishing a box of parts was:

"Y'all 'bout finished up bein' done."

That summed it up.


Re: Beginning to Be Unfinished
Posted by: petersz (69.181.22.---)
Date: January 26, 2022 01:33AM

Steevo,

Got to listen to them 'Old Eugenes' of the world -- there's much to be learn from hands-on knowledge. Thanks for stopping by.

Peter


Re: Beginning to Be Unfinished
Posted by: hpesoj (69.116.241.---)
Date: January 26, 2022 08:39AM

Peter:

You were born to teach.

Joe


Re: Beginning to Be Unfinished
Posted by: petersz (69.181.22.---)
Date: January 26, 2022 01:30PM

Thanks, Joseph...I forgot that that was what I was doing.

Cheers,

Peter


Re: Beginning to Be Unfinished
Posted by: aaron (71.193.157.---)
Date: January 26, 2022 08:54PM

Thank you Peter, you have given me much to think about. So it seems to me like this particular poem is not particular or historical at all, but an exploration of the creative process?

As for the title, I'm still workin on it

Cheers


Re: Beginning to Be Unfinished
Posted by: petersz (69.181.22.---)
Date: January 26, 2022 09:30PM

Aaron, every poem is "an exploration of the creative process."

Cheers,

Peter

Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 01/26/2009 09:31PM by petersz.


Re: Beginning to Be Unfinished
Posted by: aaron (71.193.157.---)
Date: January 28, 2022 01:21AM

Again, I like it a lot Peter, but you got one thing wrong. You gotta

"Turn up your radio...
Turn it up...so you know, its got soul"



Cheers

Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 01/28/2009 01:46AM by aaron.


Re: Beginning to Be Unfinished
Posted by: petersz (69.181.22.---)
Date: January 28, 2022 01:25AM

There's them times too, Aaron...though my soul cry for quietude at time, at times.

amo,

Peter

Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 01/28/2009 01:25AM by petersz.




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