3 Poems: Explanation

These poems are three in a series of poems written in a form specifying ten lines, with each line ending in a period and employing one word chosen at random from a dictionary or other extra-textual source. I think the effect of this formal stricture is to define the poem (and it is one of the definitions of any poem) as a joust between meaning and randomness in the primary, prime, and primal arena of self and culture: language.

That is, both formal impositions -- the line-length sentences or sentence fragments and the necessity of incorporating a large measure of "statistical uncertainty" (ten words) -- effectively mine the main road (narrative) and enforce a consciousness where form itself dislocates or skews meaning, leaving it to be resurrected (maybe) by association, juxtaposition, voice (flowers).

I think of this series of poems as a sort of autonomous emanation of the technological world, where the "I" in any of them is subsumed by the process by which they are minted. Somewhere (to use an example drawn from my life) a finely calibrated and focused laser beam is focused on a silicon wafer. On the face of the desert, measurement after measurement is taken, and the data of self distilled out of the quanta of light.

Note: Although I don't want to say anything more specific about the poems themselves, a few word definitions (from Webster's Third New International Dictionary) might be helpful.

Holey dollar: (n) A Spanish piece of eight or dollar having a round hole in the center various denomination ... 5 shillings ... current in australian 1813-29

reticulum: (def 2) netlike structure or network

selihoth: (n, pl) liturgical poems reecited as prayers of repentance and forgiveness on fast days, days preceding high holy days


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