A Kind of Blue

A Kind of Blue

10/25/2001

This alleged 3rd section of my conceptual book of poems (entirely hypothetical and even then unpublished ...) takes its title from a jazz album by Miles Davis. In these pieces, the issue of a loose poetic form and its benefits/constraints is raised. Every poem has a form - whether it's the length of the breath taken to read a line, or the space between words - and it's really how recognisable or "functional" a form is.

Repetition

The difficulties of living in
the moment consumed
her. Squirming on the hard
plastic, she flicked her pen,
twirling through
finger finger finger.

Sitting distracted, she thought
of another fantasy
to sew time up.

Monotone drone.
His voice went on.
"Focus. What are you doing? Why are you taking so long?"

twirling sounds -
"For us, life will be swooning
By, crooning it's song."

His voice insisted.
"half an hour you've only done two?"

a persistent daydream
"april showers will bring me to you?"

The poem was a result of a long afternoon in the canteen with a student who was supposed to be doing homework. The idea is that the repetition of homework is itself mundane and the student gets distracted, not so much with the happenings in a very noisy canteen but in her mind. The formal idea comes late in the poem: the first voice says something very pragmatic but the student's voice takes that and transforms it into something else while retaining the syllabic and rhythmic structure. This was difficult to do meaningfully and I kind of gave up after two. After you've read this commentary of sorts, the poem makes more sense I think.