“when your fill overflows with liberal concern, like a sieve you
daydream of less strain"
“with slight emphasis you deduce all it takes to lead down
indirect yarns, spinning as you go, collapsing all intolerance in a
fold away kitbag that in fact holds less than ‘every single’ but you
try not to dwell on unfeasibility
it was possible, yes yes it was, but… and the forever profitable
‘but’ summed up, as always, your exclusion
when in reality it was just a voice with no will of its own, just a
pedalling of wares along a production line you didn’t fuel
if it was possible to say yes at the right time only, and I mean
only, you can’t imagine what a difference that would make, to
the summing and up but also to the emphasis, always the
emphasis: the highlighting of, the brightest part of”
“by hollowing out a stretched condition, high wires risk their
humble streak for a well intentioned aerialist
from the mounting sidelines, a plea, of sorts,
separates you from your
in this dominant coming of age”
about a post by Jenny Allan
kit
"Kit" illustrates most of the things that I love about this writing. The scena is incredibly spatial and flexed, these are sentences for the eye-muscles as well as the mind's eye. The verb, a part of speech almost elided from much experimental writing, makes a dramatic return. But of course this heroic torqued verb usually boils down to meaning inaction. A social comedy of feeble, hapless floundering runs through these poems. But that makes it sound as if the pratfalls don't really matter but are sort of an idyllic collapse; the emotional desperation in the "yes" and "just" and "forever" and "plea" tells a quite different story. This fumbling turns almost nightmarish, again almost ecstatic.
The desperation in this case seems to be for the kitbag to hold All the overflowing concern (so it can be folded away, naturally), but then a juggernaut rushes past (dominant coming of age) , and humility detached from its baggage is forcibly reminded that it stands on the sidelines (which, however, are still mounting). At any rate, this is how I'm reading it today.
MP
