When I’m in Texas or Iowa I’m aware of the railroads and superhighways, and here [in New Jersey] there’s the city and the George Washington Bridge filled with its perpetual stream, the planes coming overhead, the cars moving along, the tremendous energy of the place, and its concentration of people. Nothing is still here. It’s very dynamic. I think a lot of poets are allergic to movement, and they like to turn their backs on it and create still lifes. They try to locate some sort of quasi-pastoral motif as a background for the poem, some jury-rigged construct of suburban garden as sylvan glade.
Urban life and movement present real technical difficulties and challenge poetic conventions. Urban life is dense and fast and requires flexible structures that can incorporate speed and information. It’s tough to come up with a coherent, interesting structure. Most simply avoid the problem or take refuge in some rote “avant-garde” gesture like fridge-magnet indeterminism, i.e. spilling the language all over the floor and stomping on it like a three-year-old child.
“Here I am, looking around the room / At everyone getting old except the young, / Discovering that I am lacking in vanity, Not that I care, being debonair, / Delighted by an impairment of feeling / That keeps everything away, / People standing around in a display case / Even when they are in bed with you, / And the laser-guided bombs destroy the buildings / Inside the TV, not that I care, / Not that I do not like it all, / Not that I am short or tall, / Not that I do not like to be alive, / And I appeal to you for pity, / Having in mind that you will read this / Under circumstances I cannot imagine / A thousand years from now.” from Frederick Seidel’s “Death of Shah”
along is no arrests over my
new and insofar as they deem new dimension
so yesterday evening lost one hand
philandered world of the name
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the first times disembodied her victims
to facebook page under all medics
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somebody’s got to sometimes by a voice: i hope
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facebook page the car’s floorboard talking
along to comment as its prompted demon-strangers
and clined growing she said but in the car’s floorboard
talking for removal of consciousness everyone watch
terrorists are vital injured for nursing about three boyfriends
facebook poses comments and a florida man’s hurting rubber
boys when the phone hands armed as it happened adds and
finished live feed empty seat hope it’s graphic sometimes disturbing
but others subscribe to the norse myth singing like a bullet
a bullet out of her boyfriend’s voices to acknown comment
who arrests over shooting bullet out students two other songs
the camera pointing in the adds a haunting is so users on
the recorded gets you monitor for nursing this magic protest
videos do undead town-halled voices “i hope the videos live stile
bullet outpourings home” from students trending to friends
facebook wall justified videos have turned growing clinical
tour of norse police accounts and a one-handed facebook phone
subscribes to our newest fears chilled unjust as it was
uploaded 1.65 billion times it propels the last case in a motive
an empty seat hope it happened a trend to people
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lost one hand philanderer wake up graphic
sometime in high school they’re consciousness
everyone’s hand a voyeur a trend for people
from this page but other-allied will close
victims were disembodied
from stuff like the news feed
them empty seats and hope
