{"id":3783,"date":"2016-12-30T10:18:33","date_gmt":"2016-12-30T18:18:33","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/alteritas.net\/GXL\/?p=3783"},"modified":"2016-12-31T15:39:33","modified_gmt":"2016-12-31T23:39:33","slug":"3783","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/alteritas.net\/GXL\/?p=3783","title":{"rendered":"Edge"},"content":{"rendered":"

Osip Mandelstam once wrote that a poem begins with an obsessive humming in the ears, what some might call an earworm. That is certainly how it has been for me, though there are many things that go on after that initial tuning in, that <\/em>annuciazione. <\/em>The specificity of poetic language can in fact be found in the tension between the pull\u00a0of words organizing themselves, being organized by the writer, and the <\/em>noumenon those words evoke. I have written elsewhere that the reason I write is to have poems I understand to read. This poem, the words and the events\u00a0feeding them have\u00a0haunted me for years. The seminal\u00a0incident\u00a0which fed and still feeds Edge goes back to the winter of 1969 in Edmonton when I lived in a highrise for the first time. I can no longer determine whether “walls of light” came first or the vertigo of feeling on a precipice\u00a0with no walls to retain me. That I projected that giddiness into another’s relationship with me was, however, there from the onset.\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n

***<\/p>\n

Hold still, I know it hurts
\nmuch more than I can judge.
\nYou live on the very edge,
\nyour guts exert
\ngravity to\u00a0begrudge.<\/p>\n

Hold still, I know it hurts
\nwhen once again he skirts
\nthe pith with verbiage.
\nHe too lives on a ledge,
\nhis arguments integuments,
\nscaffolding where he can lodge.<\/p>\n

Hold still, I know it hurts.
\nPrecariousness imparts
\nthis poignancy to rage.
\nWe all must face the edge
\nwhen nakedness thwarts
\nand confines us in its cage.<\/p>\n

Hold still, I know it hurts.
\nYou live on the very edge.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

<<\/i>\u00a0Memory the Mockingbird<\/em><\/p>\n

\"Bookmark<\/a><\/div>\n
<\/span><\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Osip Mandelstam once wrote that a poem begins with an obsessive humming in the ears, what some might call an earworm. That is certainly how it has been for me, though there are many things that go on after that initial tuning in, that annuciazione. The specificity of poetic language can in fact be found … <\/p>\n

Continue reading “Edge”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n

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