The Daily Glance
The lines breaks make for some interesting connections. For example, does "I have not limbs" connect to "a dubious secondary wakefulness"? It sounds like it is connected to "my eye open," but the punctuation and syntax here is crafted in a way that makes it difficult to say what goes with what. Is the dream the eye rolling along towards someone or something else? The poem perhaps? The speaker's life?
Lisa Samuels' The Invention of Culture is a dense book that explores the creation of culture/thinking. Many of the poems seem to examine thought or be on the edge of discovering one's culture--they seem to be questioning the real versus the dream versus the constructed.
Grim as an obtuse parameter, I have no limbs
a dubious secondary wakefulness, my eye open
in fetching avocation rolling awkward
towards you or picked up as though a watchful
pose could find me dangling the foster-driven
mandates of this dream
The lines breaks make for some interesting connections. For example, does "I have not limbs" connect to "a dubious secondary wakefulness"? It sounds like it is connected to "my eye open," but the punctuation and syntax here is crafted in a way that makes it difficult to say what goes with what. Is the dream the eye rolling along towards someone or something else? The poem perhaps? The speaker's life?
While many of the pieces are interesting in the book, I found "Choose Me" especially noteworthy since in it Samuels makes use of Emily Dickinson's form, complete with the dashes and skipping syntax. This is striking since many poets evoke Dickinson, but very few manage her form well.
stone line out as we ascend -- no deliverance
more flat-top hooligans I wager -- having paid that debt
my back lacerate with grasses -- floating betimes in sullen 'sea'
Comments