15: rob mclennan

Gedichte 1853 Und 1854: Zum Lazarus: ‘Einst sah ich viele’

What can you do with banjo
lazy, when the moon is full

the brain’s proud
, tendrils

smoke-hearse
first, come real

lie, old poem, wretched rhyme

violet burns
a cloying head, my never-fully-closed

where eyes, ears, mouth, nose
should be

never regret
moonlight in bed

a banjo, memory, regret
another cloying poem-thing

‘I have a foolish heart?’
what does that mean?

sweet, forgetful
, midnight smoulders words


*


Note: If mine, I would read Barwin's original lines as quick scribbles, scattered throughout my notebook, to be reordered, cobbled together into a workable poem. I’ve been more interested in troubling the narrative impulse and longer lines, so my natural impulse would be there, and in altering the rhythms to more reflect a series of flows and interruptions, flows and interruptions. I would remove, automatically, repeated words, first-person pronouns, the unbearable “I,” which is difficult to remove, especially when you do (it remains, even invisible, like a stain).

Also, as I often rant to workshop groups, I would steer away from the use of “like,” finding it too passive, and even unbearable (I find removing “ing” has the same effect, for the same reason); why say a thing is “like” when you can be more direct, say simply a thing?