Degrees of Gray in Philipsburg, in Loitering, Charles D'Ambrosio
Poets might not save, but the clichés surrounding September 11 didn't stop anything either, and in this sense the score, in the game of language, is decisively on the side of poetry. If forced to choose between failures, poetry is probably the better one. The difference between the truth and a cliché is the difference between what we really know and what we've all heard about.
Degrees of Gray in Philipsburg, in Loitering, Charles D'Ambrosio If rock bottom, if total bust for a poet is silence, then the questions must be unanswerable, without remedy, to provoke the central event, which is language. Answers are the end of speech, not the beginning, and if language is the main draw in poetry, silence is the occasion for it, the ground of renewal. Questions precede speech; they're language tensely coiled, expectant.
Degrees of Gray in Philipsburg, in Loitering, Charles D'Ambrosio You walk these streets
laid out by the insane, past hotels that didn't last, bars that did, the tortured try of local drivers to accelerate their lives. Only churches are kept up. The jail turned 70 this year. The only prisoner is always in, not knowing what he's done. The principal supporting business now is rage. excerpt from Degrees of Gray in Philipsburg by Richard Hugo, in Loitering, Charles D'Ambrosio It's weird, the whole relation of fiction to fact.
Any Resemblance to Anyone Living, in Loitering, Charles D'Ambrosio The closest I can come to understanding this is that somehow time is removed from the idea of place so that everything is eternally the same. The place doesn't change in either historical or seasonal time and gathers an oppressive weight because of it, always present, always an obstacle.
Doo-Wop Down the Road: Richard Brautigan in Loitering, Charles D'Ambrosio |
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