Jody's Notes
It's kind of explicit, right? All the wordplay, both subliminal and otherwise.
It's a cliche: poems about writing, about poems, about meaning. It's a genre, a really well-worked one. Being fresh in it, therefore, is hard; it's a challenge. (It's like writing about Spring. Or roses. Or sex. Or your children. Or your grandmother. Or soup. Chicken soup, in particular.)
The forked tongue,
still traditional in some circles;
the silent snake maligned (the
pun presumed innocent); the
tremor of subtext, the cigar only
a cigar, the fundamentalist
stymied (“In the beginning, the
word”).
Under such circumstances,
even echoes are loaded: we listen,
ponder, add caveats, marginalia,
footnotes, an appendix.
Not to mention commentary.
Not to mention.
© 2000 Jody Azzouni