Q: Why am I eating a biscuit as
I write this?
A: I am not eating a biscuit,
but instead travelling on a train, so this question is meaningless. Not a good
start.
Q: Is that unpretentious enough
for us all?
A: That I cannot answer as I
cannot speak for us all – indeed our total voice is in truth silence.
Q: How far back does the memory
of this poem go?
A: The memory of this poem,
like all memory, lives only in the present.
Q: Can there be anything in it
that will really heal?
A: There can be something in it
that will really heal – if we are lucky, we shall discover it.
Q: Why do some poets write
crisp, neat & decorous?
A: Some poets do not write on
trains; other poets believe in writing anywhere, anyhow.
Q: Is there any truth, then, in
that legend?
A: All legends are true and not
true – to mislead is, after all, merely to lead to an unexpected place.
Q: How can these tangled lines
help us to arrive?
A: We can only discover this by
following the lines through & closely observing what is happening.
Q: Can it be that easy to write
down how to cook?
A: Writing is always easier
than cooking.
Q: Why are some words familiar
and others shaken lines?
A: That all words are shaken lines
is in fact the case – familiarity merely disguises this.
Q: Is this forming anything we
can call a poem?
A: We can call anything a poem;
what a poem is formed of is up to that poem.
Q: How will it all be ready
when the wave is?
A: Oh, believe me, it cannot be
ready either after or before the wave.
Q: Can anyone care two figs for
all these words?
A: If these words give as much
pleasure as two figs – then, maybe, there will be care, and someone to care
etc.
Q: Why do we link the arrowed
lines & the scrawled together?
A: Somewhere, all lines join up
and link, though it is difficult, perhaps impossible, to find this point.
Q: Is there any escape from
this gemination of left & right?
A: Interesting results can be
obtained either through using a sufficiently large number of mirrors, or by
turning things over onto their sides.
Q: How is any process that is
worthwhile helped forward here?
A: Think of these words as
staining any process, worthwhile or not; the direction of the coloured light
shining through them can be called forward, if you like.
Q: Can one poem be
further than any other, or ?
A: “So is the poetry
that excessive language use which actually numbs you in some ways, and whose
over-indulgence makes you incapable of acting more deliberately in the world?
Or is it that which blows apart the excesses of a consumer society?”[1]
[1]
Andrea Brady, quoted in Scott Thurston, Talking
Poetics — Dialogues in Innovative Poetry: Scott Thurston talks to Karen Mac
Cormack, Jennifer Moxley, Caroline Bergvall and Andrea Bradley (Shearsman,
2011), p 122
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