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JH: Everyone's place as a poet is wobbly, due to the multivalence of poetry. Poetics and poetry are two different things. Poems and the idea of poetry often influence poetics; poetics sometimes influence poems; poetics never influence poetry. Fame is no plant that grows on mortal soil, wrote Milton. The antiquity of poetry (“antiquity” in place of “timelessness”) can make for feelings of belatedness. Poetry wasn’t with anyone’s beginning, nor was anyone at the beginning of poetry. Who was born mindful of poetry? Whose first poem was poetry? Thus, no one is late to poetry, nor is poetry a lost Arcadia. An example of your punctual gift of poetry (a gift bestowed upon you, a gift proffered to us) is “Those Jerks in the iPhone Commercial”, recently posted to the Wryting-l list:

There is a poem presented in glass form, chills of summer. A whisper
of father and mother makes increment, glistering patois. Shades of
Apache clouds cling to New England willow. People are not panicles, no
matter how planted. Last thought is first thought.

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AHB: The poem is a collection of phrases and sentences. That, sometimes, seems the whole story. Plus the noise of the television inspired the title. An emotional current runs thru because words are conditioned that way. I can never remember if it was Williams or Creeley that wrote, he wants to say something but is saying it anyhow. Without supercharging the idea of poetry, I must say that poetry often feels oracular. In the writing if not the reading. My poems are brief events that I do not return to often. My wife posted a poem of mine on Facebook. When I read it, I liked it, but I did not recognize it as mine. Your own poetry seems oracular to me. I may be using oracular incorrectly. I mean the language flows thru you, the writer, not exactly bidden, not exactly contained. NOT like Edgar Cayce, whatever that story is about, but shepherded or… Here are two brief poems that you recently posted to Wrytings-L:

These gargantuan hounds

The stars their cockleburs, what quarry do these gargantuan hounds course? In other words, who opposes you, Artemis? As the devotee walks between your temple's columns, so Actaeon imbruted walks among the legs of hounds outsized.

* * *

This Dawn

The brain of Actaeon imbruted is the brain of infant Oedipus deserted. This dawn of Actaeon will be dragged from the skies by hounds. * * *I had to look up imbruted, These works come from somewhere, seem related, and hold mystery…