you or I
speak of truth
but write only
of ourselves
our heads
spawn the words
our hearts dispose
crucibles of ideas
lines of argument
last lines of defence
you or I
lines etched
on one facet
of a prism
reflections of place
refracted biographies
chromatic tonalities
scattered light
we squint
against the glare
to focus
on events
significances
tides rising
water running
before the wind
human agency
no more than
an aspiration
you and I
lines in a story
we cannot unweave
It was a debate on a poetry page about writing first-person poems. One opinion was that they are self-indulgent. I didn’t agree… Well, there are I-poems and I-poems. I’m not in favour of directly writing autobiographically. Too often that becomes maudlin or chest-beatingly triumphal.
Then again, I’ve written plenty in the first person, slipping personal experience in there along with interpretation and speculation of the experiences of others.
A wrote a long response (of which the above is a distillate). Our experience is a conduit for what we write. Necessarily. The world exists inside our heads, comes in, goes out; we can’t divorce ourselves, the observers, from the act of observation.
It’s all very quantum, very systems-theory. Yes, that’s it, we are all caught up in quantum entanglement. Oh, what webs…
speak of truth
but write only
of ourselves
our heads
spawn the words
our hearts dispose
crucibles of ideas
lines of argument
last lines of defence
you or I
lines etched
on one facet
of a prism
reflections of place
refracted biographies
chromatic tonalities
scattered light
we squint
against the glare
to focus
on events
significances
tides rising
water running
before the wind
human agency
no more than
an aspiration
you and I
lines in a story
we cannot unweave
© BH, 2020
It was a debate on a poetry page about writing first-person poems. One opinion was that they are self-indulgent. I didn’t agree… Well, there are I-poems and I-poems. I’m not in favour of directly writing autobiographically. Too often that becomes maudlin or chest-beatingly triumphal.
Then again, I’ve written plenty in the first person, slipping personal experience in there along with interpretation and speculation of the experiences of others.
A wrote a long response (of which the above is a distillate). Our experience is a conduit for what we write. Necessarily. The world exists inside our heads, comes in, goes out; we can’t divorce ourselves, the observers, from the act of observation.
It’s all very quantum, very systems-theory. Yes, that’s it, we are all caught up in quantum entanglement. Oh, what webs…
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