Marjorie Welish is the author of Signifying Art: Essays on Art after 1960 just released by Cambridge University Press. Her most recent collection of poetry is else, in substance from Paradigm Press.
Working Notes
"The lyric lately," a talk given at Barnard University considering what the lyric can comprehend, was the impetus for writing this poem. Centering on Barbara Guest's work, specifically some lines from her poem "Pallor," in which she quotes my own poetry, I respond in this poem to her quoting me by quoting her.
Textile
As if
"And somewhere other than observable water"
Insofar as
surfeits
"and the separation may possess its own corrective"
or domino
"What the lyric can comprehend"
in many-valued trespass
as soon as
trellis in everything
Pallor won.
To attain to urban corrective
another symposium
advocating a long escarpment
of references
a convection current
not floral
but what the lyrics can comprehend
"wetting her skirt."
Insofar as
assets
drying his shirt
lyrically, faithfully floral
up to and including incomprehension
convection
advocating little posits, immense thickness.
Of references,
we prefer all threads
Seething
the self-same traffic.
Symposia attain to because
because
gymnasia attain to
a planet.
Crushed colors
"Two lacks."