Well, the most off-hand-looking poem surely does have to undergo revision and amendment. My own manuscripts are destroyed with scribles and erasures.
Never ever thought that those poems could just have flowed along...in fact, the stream of consciousness poems (never revised, says the proud author) show up their lack of revision because of their lack of crispness. Amazing how much starch you can put into a poem by judicious cutting.
I loved the Bush poem. How amazing to think that it just sort of happened all by itself, surely a miracle. I await the new Saint George.
Re. O'Hara: I liked the poem you posted so much that I looked the man up, and am doing a little presentation this Tuesday at Loquations. Posting the programme for that day, Mumbai Zesters are cordially welcome.
jane
Vivek Narayanan <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
Vivek Narayanan <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
Note that, although Frank O'Hara's poems are of the moment, he in fact revised a hell of a lot. He often revised to make them look even more off-hand. This is evident in Ken Koch's book, Making Your Own Days, where he shows one of O'Hara's poems in manuscript, heavy with the marks and cross-outs of revision.
V
On 12/4/05, jane bhandari <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:Dear Temp,feeling victimised ... because I was hungry as stated in the previous line (and actually these particular blood tests didn't require fasting, but they insisted.)ligatured ... standard practice for blood tests: temporary closure of the vein to get a good flow.needle's tooth ... I already had the bizarre idea of the vampire, hence the tooth. Needle alone does not convey its ghoulishness.lunch box ... I had just eaten my sandwich - see line 3 of the last stanza. The lunchbox became a safe receptacle until the blood samples could be handed over. Bombay Hospital uses its patients as peons. I see that the last stanza does not fully explain this practice. I will re-write...'Then they say I must take two samples
To the next department. It's still closed.
I eat my life-saving sandwich and wait,
The samples cached safely in my lunch box,
A nice little snack for Dracula.'
This is just a flippant little poem; I wrote it because like Frank O'Hara I like poems of the moment. You are right about the Kodak effect. It is exactly that, and like the old Kodak pictures, had to be carefully composed from the start to get a certain effect. The first draft undergoes revision as it is being written. This is not your effortless stream of consciousness: some preliminary organisation of the central idea is required. If you are lucky this goes well enough that you don't have to revise much later on - though I will let this sit for a week or two before I commit myself to that.Jane
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