Questions of moment
What then is the moment of the poem?
- the moment it speaks of?
- the moment in which it is experienced?
- the moment when it was written?
The moment it speaks – may not be a moment, for a start. There are those poems which do not catch on the moment. They are static, monuments, or they run on and on. There is distance, a lot of run around, a heaviness.
Can you write about a moment, write around a moment, within a moment, beside it?
The moment of experience – if experience is continuous, how can you break the breath into each of its takes, in/out. But is continuous continuous? I think of Zeno’s arrow and the points plotted on the arc of flight. Of life broken like the line. Of parts like stanzas (rooms) and in each room is air and space but also doors and windows, legs of furniture.
The writing moment – so many of these. The sounding in the head. The pencil or pen scratching. Typing, delete, return. Cut and paste. That may take an age.
Currently I’m interested in the way that often the things called things are not themselves or in themselves, they are abstracted, as they are daily into songs and advertising copy and code. Wouldn’t it be nice? They are games, and games you want to win. Everyone’s a winner! Is that a fact? With poems playing up a storm, that crashes clouds as thunder chords or is it an aeroplane? The emotion of plane is so much different and it goes in ways a storm cannot.
- the moment it speaks of?
- the moment in which it is experienced?
- the moment when it was written?
The moment it speaks – may not be a moment, for a start. There are those poems which do not catch on the moment. They are static, monuments, or they run on and on. There is distance, a lot of run around, a heaviness.
Can you write about a moment, write around a moment, within a moment, beside it?
The moment of experience – if experience is continuous, how can you break the breath into each of its takes, in/out. But is continuous continuous? I think of Zeno’s arrow and the points plotted on the arc of flight. Of life broken like the line. Of parts like stanzas (rooms) and in each room is air and space but also doors and windows, legs of furniture.
The writing moment – so many of these. The sounding in the head. The pencil or pen scratching. Typing, delete, return. Cut and paste. That may take an age.
Currently I’m interested in the way that often the things called things are not themselves or in themselves, they are abstracted, as they are daily into songs and advertising copy and code. Wouldn’t it be nice? They are games, and games you want to win. Everyone’s a winner! Is that a fact? With poems playing up a storm, that crashes clouds as thunder chords or is it an aeroplane? The emotion of plane is so much different and it goes in ways a storm cannot.
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