After Solaris
I watch a film with my friend Tyler,
himself a film student, and seconds after
it has ended we begin talking. It seems
the right thing to do, even though we
acknowledge that the best parts are when
we are left guessing—
standing out in an open field
the ground drops away,
birds fly up suddenly, a branch is
not there. Something like that.
We try to say it—you cannot not make
meaning—as with words,
a tree might
rot, or
fall, some kind of disturbance happening
as order, like life, full of separate
elements that rub up against one another
and aren’t sure whether to give
all of themselves, or none. They get
stuck in between—we keep talking—
things mix and I’ve turned serious, and I think
he’s just tired. I have a sudden urge
for wisdom—knowing it’s a long way off,
that I’m probably sitting right on top of it.
The kinds of worlds to which we have proximity
are our own,
and I wonder if he thinks that, or what
he thinks—
where he is, and who,
so I might go stand there,
adjacent scene in a movie,
and not resolve.
himself a film student, and seconds after
it has ended we begin talking. It seems
the right thing to do, even though we
acknowledge that the best parts are when
we are left guessing—
standing out in an open field
the ground drops away,
birds fly up suddenly, a branch is
not there. Something like that.
We try to say it—you cannot not make
meaning—as with words,
a tree might
rot, or
fall, some kind of disturbance happening
as order, like life, full of separate
elements that rub up against one another
and aren’t sure whether to give
all of themselves, or none. They get
stuck in between—we keep talking—
things mix and I’ve turned serious, and I think
he’s just tired. I have a sudden urge
for wisdom—knowing it’s a long way off,
that I’m probably sitting right on top of it.
The kinds of worlds to which we have proximity
are our own,
and I wonder if he thinks that, or what
he thinks—
where he is, and who,
so I might go stand there,
adjacent scene in a movie,
and not resolve.
posted by Adam at 9:04 PM
8 Comments:
oh, oh, oh! you, approximate. i love the way you converse with yourself, insert phrases here that acknowledge there's a listener. there's something in there that circles back to this proximity that you're talking about, and the beautiful grammar of "the kinds...to which..." thank you for sharing!
I think you can make meaning and you can do it with words. Very directly, and very literally. I'll post some stuff soon to show what I mean. I also very much like expressions of unfound meaning, words sought out which hover unutterably among tiring tongues - an expression as you've given here - but there are also moments when those words are very close; Heideggerian moments of vision, Lacanian moments of jouissance, human moments of sagacious contemplation and comprehension of the void....
meaning is a boat
maybe words can be a direct path to meaning, but they choose not to be in your poems. Instead, they are the paving stones of that very path, aware of themselves thirsting for the ceaselessly receding signified.
see you anon in p-town.
On second thought, I was amiss in using the word "signified." I should've stuck with "meaning" like you guys. Words signify what they signify, which can be different than meaning.
Also, I was never quite sure what anon meant. I hope it means "soon" or "this Wednesday" rather than "never"
it means anonymous
which means unnamed
(meaning without meaning to mean)
now,
p-town means
the gay capital of the east
coast: provincetown.
thus i supposed
when you said, "see
you anon in p-town,"
you were alluding to
an anon-on-anon
rendevous...
"this Wednesday" works for me!
Nice poem, Robert. It captured, for me, those moments... or perhaps that is the very opposite of what it does: it isn't capturing those moments, caging them, encapsulating them, as we so often envision words as traps set, baited with a reader for the starving and primal beast of character unknown. Your poem is not that of a taxidermist.
It is rather an unkempt passage through the vast dim frightening necessary growing shifting forest of the then. It is a lapse - in the passing of the now - something which exists only in the following of it, and neither before, nor after.
After all, meaning is not a noun. It's the present participle of the verb to mean, and thus it can only act, never be.
So you say you hope to stand here. For better or worse, though, your lot is to walk in front. As I see it, that is not what your poem means, but how.
(Thanks for showing 'the way.')
i hate having the last word
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