A poem, like a song, may be given a tempo. Attention is often grabbed at readings by allegro or faster poems with rushing cataracts of juxtaposed word-images. There’s a comfortable pedestrian moderato that prevails in less feisty community readings. However some patient thoughts and experiences, like expansive music, absolutely require adagio or largo, deep breaths leaving more space around resonant words, phrases, cadences.
Journal
Prosaic Omphalic Vistas
I am about to pivot to a more reflective and prosaic mode on Dayword, still focused on poetry but withholding new poems of my own for awhile. The happy news is that I’m returning to Athens, where among experiences to come I will be working on a poetry collection. The process demands some withholding, to let the work become itself without arbitrary exhibitionism. If you’re in Athens in the next two months and happen to have a bottle of wine, you can hear some. Speaking of arbitrary exhibitionism, and while we’re navel gazing, I confess this is my greatest disappointment […]