Monday, February 18, 2008

And Now, (Again) the Anticlimax

After reading Jean-Paul Pecqueur's The Case Against Happiness, particularly "What We Want When We Want It" I want to resift the debris of a former life in words. This work, full of dancing digressions, makes me want to try my hand again at it. Here, the meaningless conversation fillers like "reeling me in" and "[l]ike quote-end-quote now" provide nice turns--Looking back at one less halting poem, I wonder if Pecqueur's sensibility is at work here, of one who painstakingly means, but says, nothing. Or is it off-handed irony?

Your Personal Effects

To undermine any appearance of rationality, practicality

Enter the immersion exhibits of the office: their workrooms
Nervy obstacles for personal ascriptions, and of course, finality.
Flush spines of trade paper and other forsaken vendibles
Proffering the personal, when clearly you mean business, straying

Here an incidental activity from Home, and not hours spent
In contemplation there before that doorway with its unrelenting ivy

To be rent-free again! The inside faintly redolent of the aviary
Where this bird has flown, and that excuse-strewn daybook
Divested of meeting one. Who could possibly envy the life huddled

Behind your post. Your voice breaking with a client who cannot hold
You. Blanched, while paperwhites rework tri-winged from forcing
Glasses, you rewash their feeble roots nestled in tumbled glass,
And so Clear this is the shoot and scape that suits you, "just fine."


1 comment:

Σφιγξ said...

I am leaning towards inserting Cover Girl colors into literature, so that I can retrace the culture (albeit consumer, which is arguably the ant-culture) of that period. For instance, when I think of Tangee coral lip color, I think of baby-boomers with frosted hair.