Tuesday 134: The act of reading

Note: Today’s poem is formatted for desktop. It’s fine to read it on your phone, but the line breaks will be a little different.

The act of reading


No more than a glance
or a painting
that makes you
laugh.
Purely speculative and
a little dumb (like silent)
A trick
of impermanence and serenity
on leadbond ink,
heavy paper,
dissolves the shortest distance
like staring between the same place
through an open door.
It's the simplest thing,
a cure
for fatigue and facial
scarring.
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When the month is out, one thing I plan on is to share a list of what I’ve been reading over the course of the month. As much as I’ll take cues from living my life, I’ve always felt like fiction and prose takes way more from voyeuristic experience of being than does poetry. For example, the first novel I’m attempting is inspired almost entirely by a house in my neighborhood that I run by a lot. The house is endlessly inspiring; I’m obsessed with it. But I couldn’t write a good poem about it, in and of itself. I get a lot of poetry from newspapers, other novels, nonfiction, advertisements, etc. The seed might be one thing, like stubbing my toe or seeing a hawk kill a pigeon, but the plant comes from reading. “My poetics are mediated entirely through the act and process of reading” is the sort of statement I might determine appropriate one day. Makes me nervous to hang my hat on anything like that, though.

“Have read little and understood less.”