Logorrhea

Question 10: Can poetry lead to logorrhea? There are recorded cases, bookcases of prize examples. The editor of the anthology ‘Never An Unpublished Thought’ asks, understandably, isn’t poetry meant to say everything in the least words? Apparently not. Another poetic hazard is mutism. Guidebooks call this Writer’s Block: creative ferment perhaps. Perhaps not. Can a lawyer get a poet off all charges (founded and unfounded) on grounds of [logorrhea]? That would be an alpine stack of paperwork. But then, what poet could afford a lawyer? Mutism would be inadmissible in a court because the accused has to answer the questions.  

Inclement

Rain washes the train’s west windows with increasing force. Thrashed saplings uproot. Shop signs shudder. “Due to the [inclement] conditions,” says the driver over intercom, “this train will not proceed past Moorabbin.” We passengers step into the gale at Platform 2. Sheltering from winds that would render us horizontal, we share conjectures. A tree across the track. Grid’s down. Everything’s stopped. We laugh behind our masks at incomprehensible faint overhead announcements. Lights dim hallucinatory, glare again. It’s theatre of the absurd as half hours pass, no replacement buses, no taxis. Only poor amplification, flying timber, shaking fences, and “inclement conditions”.   

Photograph: fallen eucalyptus branch at CHN in Cheltenham, later on yesterday the 29^th of October 2021.

Trick-or-treat

 New season’s decorations, going fast. Skull chains, 12-set: ideal for front fences, individually named after high profile anti-vaxxers. Long-legged spiders in different sizes: 40cm 8-legs for letterboxes, 14-metre 8-legs cover the entire property. Orange pumpkins: bisected, reveal the ex-president’s peanut brain. Shredded lacework: best quality synthetic cobwebs for shrubbery. False-bottom buckets: first steps in [trick-or-treat] consumerism. Toilet roll madness, going cheap: envelope yourself in a shroud using all the paper stashed on Day One of lockdowns. Premier masks: freak the neighbours with their favourite hate object, or collect the set, includes Cobargo, Dictator, Bin Chicken: Please note: Potato, sold out.

Remember

 On the phone with Mother. She’s reading Gideon Haigh’s Doc Evatt book. “He shows, in the thirties everyone in Australia knew everyone.” “It’s still sort of like that.” “Not quite. There’s cultural diversity.” “True, multiculturalism. That’s the change. Good!” “Yes.” We talk about Evatt as a world figure, 1948 the UN Rights declaration, compared with what, Morrison? “Biden couldn’t [remember] his name.” I mention Gideon’s Bradman book. “Your grandmother hated him.” “What, your mother?” “No, Gran. She was English.” “Yes, I know.” “When that song came on the radio...” “’Our Don Bradman’?” “Yes, she’d go over and switch it off!”

I

 That skyline of I’s keeps veined population industriously in line. Hi vertical I after vertical I, workplaces squared-off towering glass. I robot at every desk, their IQs never in question. Password all my I and Betty Martin, I in caps. Email grammar check underlines in scarlet ‘Between you and I’. All time stops, a lunch pebble lodged under the I-key. Either side of the I’s, vehicles transport their egos home. I after I avoids collision, separates the up from down. I don’t know how Poirot does it, I really don’t. Though I in dreams dissolves some say, dream’s all [I].

 

     That skyline of I’s keeps veined population

        industriously In line. Hi vertical

                                   I after

                   vertical I, workplaces squared-off

     towering glass. I robot at every desk,

                         their IQs never

                                   In question. Password

                      all my I and Betty Martin,

                                   I

                                   In caps. Email grammar check

             underlines In scarlet ‘Between you

                           and I’. All time stops, a lunch pebble   lodged   under the I-key.  Either side of

                             the I’s, vehicles transport

   their egos home. I

                          after I avoids collision, separates the

     up   from down. I don’t know how Poirot

                          does It,

                                    I really don’t.

                    Though I

                                    In dreams dissolves some say,

              dream’s all I.

Space

 Question 9: How much [space] should poetry use? Plenty. Give yourself room. Cramped lined notebooks, forget it. Lavish A4 spaces receive the full force-field. Some Italians write every direction 1metrex1metre. Fold-up in their pocket. American deadbeats set a roll in their typewriter. They needed a computer. You may compose on a fresh document to eternity. Dear Eternity, thankyou for your time. Single-spaced Times New Roman 12 pt. All that comes later. Really you may write over whatever’s available. The serviette, your forearm, seven-storey walls. A recycled ream does no harm. Crossings-out, arrows, side lists of possibilities enhance the overall effect.

Conundrum

Question 8: Can poetry not be a conundrum? The smallest units of written poetry are letters and words. [Conundrum] itself is a poem, starting life as joke Latin amongst Renaissance under-graduates (conandrum, quonundrum), by the Restoration a riddling pun, now today, an intricate problem of any sort. We venture forth to answer questions, only to find the answer has more questions. Your poem can also be a constellation of consonants, concert of connections, confluences of content; a contrast of consciousness, confession of confusions, confirmations of contradiction; a comparison of contrariness, contact of convolutions, concatenations of concerns; a contract with contemplation...   

 

Photograph of a conundrum: the visitor’s members’ ticket entrance at the old Fitzroy Football Ground, Edinburgh Gardens, Brunswick Street, North Fitzroy, 6^th of October 2021, 3:22 pm.

Extraordinary

 Question 7: How does poetry make the ordinary seem extraordinary? Desire to do so, must be first. Not everyone thinks of turning the cutlery drawer into Spoonville. Then everyone outdoes everyone else. Your value of the seeming ordinary pushes limits. Not just the how but the why of everything nameable. Devices you discover along the way make for the [extraordinary]. Analogy transfigures. Words themselves lift the ordinary into something new.  Only 26 letters, too. Sharing is a main motive. It’s fine to like daffodils, or grevilleas, but the next step is showing others their explosions amidst our glorious fleshly world.

Freedom

 Freedom: Always available. Freedom: Choice of lockdown. Freedom: Deliberately saving lives. Freedom: Bees on wattle trees. Freedom: Gratitude for everything done. Freedom: In dreams, where you walk through a door. Freedom: This is not the end. Freedom: Meaningful response. Freedom: Released. Freedom: Counting the hairs on your head. Freedom: More than yippee. Freedom: A surfboard. Freedom: Giving warning; as contrast, not warning. Freedom: Migration from tyranny. Freedom (archaic): A potato chip. Freedom: Never went away. Freedom: Our whole lives. Freedom: Not hiding. Freedom: Major furniture retailer. Freedom: An open boat in a high sea. [Freedom]: Asylum in an unknown land.

 

Written around the time of (so-called) Freedom Day, i.e. lifting of the sixth lockdown in Melbourne at midnight on the 21st of October, 2021. Photograph: Hawksburn, 14th  of July, 2020, 6:40 am.

Slam

Question 6: Can slam poetry be short, or does it have to be long? Recital can be fraught. Egos contend with attention spans as a roomful of poets take their turn to speak. Some think public readings are an insult to poetry, which was written for close reading tête-à-tête. This is how far we have come from the Edwardians. They memorised epics just to get through tiffin. [Slam] is performance. Slam asks for entertainment about your bad attitudes and rollercoaster love life. It’s like hit records: three minutes is perfect, seven way radical. Try 40 haiku and see what happens.

 

Photograph taken in 2014: underpass mosaic by Pamela Irving at Patterson Station in Bentleigh. We all know something made by Pamela Irving. Her studio nearby has been in operation since 2006: https://www.pamelairving.com.au/about/

Positive

 Question 5: Does poetry need to be positive? Not everyone asks this question. They charge forth existentially, dig deep relentlessly, plough on regardless. Cheerful asides are not their métier, sunrises go unnoticed. They have something to say, everything actually, they spare no pains. No one’s stopping them, but is anyone reading them? Choose subjects you are [positive] about. It’s hard to be negative about sunflowers, superb fairywrens say, or tomatoes. Laughing at negative subjects is curative: rudeness, politicians, space travel, things like that. Still, poetry is the complete palette, so don’t use rosepink when you are called to use blackcloud.

Stream

Question 4: Can you write poems with a single [stream] of words one after another? All poetry is a single-stream of words. Even concrete poetry is single words juxtaposed. Single-stream is so available today we may gawk at a comma. Is that flotsam there for some reason, we ask, as the single-stream takes us inexorably, meanderingly, towards decidedly a delta. Abandonment of punctuation coincides with recurrent desire for natural speech. Even though poetry is very exactly not natural speech. The most natural sounding poetry is oft times the most contrived. It’s a conundrum. Go with the flow, fairly much. End.

Scarecrow

 Who do you frighten? What’s that under your fossil cap? Coal for brains? Oceans may drown us before the wind gets an answer. Long straw or short straw, what’s it to be? Stuffed with murmur-weed and doch-weed you’re quite the sight, all right. A currawong could peck out your eye soon as blink. Your pent-up cost-all or nothing gambit, it won’t save the farm. Gale forces swivel your stick-in-the-mud. Yet still, eyeless gazer, you point the wrong way. Smirking [scarecrow], you can’t stop the weather. Do you feel the burn? Your eastern seaboard’s on fire. Get back to us tomorrow.

Show

 Question 3: Must poems [show] and not tell? Object poems are balancing acts. Is “juice segment planet” an orange, or lemon? Your “heavy dark cloud”, the elephant in the room? Confessionals can be okay. Making them public, not so okay. Tell poems risk tell-all, making you vulnerable, not to mention those mentioned. Uplifting poems declare uplift. Getting others to feel uplift is the challenge. Syntax, word choice, analogy- you throw the book at uplift, unsure it’s not a crash landing. Take sex, for example. One poet’s description of kissing is another’s cause for hilarity. Words to avoid: luscious, tingling, full-throttle.

Figurative

Question 2: Can you have poems without figurative language? The academic Harold Bloom wrote a book about how to read poetry where he says all poetry is figurative speech. The first exhilaration of this claim subsides as Bloom continues, how we read poets to find their influences and quotes from other poets. Which only proves that’s how some academics read poetry. The character Molly Bloom would not give a fig for figurative. She speaks for 70 pages without a full stop, a lot of it [figurative], expressive, explosive, reflexive, intensive, deceptive, informative, transgressive, and all of it poetry. Answer: Yes.

Roadmap

 Question 1: Can poetry be a roadmap? It depends. Robert Frost talks about how the road less travelled “has made all the difference.” Politicians call this a dangerous detour, even a dead end, because their private attitude is “my way or the highway”, choices that can prove not just unpoetic, but stupid. Dante Alighieri wrote a [roadmap] explaining existence’s dangers and delights. Consider how poetry, all exterior sounds and figures, is regurgitation of your interior journeys. Messy, no colour-coded Googlemap. Sometimes poetry’s just a walk around the block: searching memories, a surprise flower, the guard dog that barks every time.

Grass

Our accomplished ancestors, how well we recognise them, in tiny brown photographs, or further back, just a baptism entry. They stare into the sun-dazed real with more recondite knowledge than we can imagine. Grass is lines like rain spilling from the earth. Lying back, we think of everyone not a direct ancestor. Adults in our childhood, their way of laughing at inexplicable sentences. Really, it’s a wonder, how they look at us from childhood, comforting somehow. Rain finer than [grass] stems falls night and day, on occasion. After it’s cleared they go off somewhere, with their plans for somewhere fun.

Terribly

 It’s all terribly hard when international flights again. Terribly hard my fingernails. It’s all terribly empty escalators. Terribly empty prime minister. All terribly easy-going jab. Terribly easy-going jab refusal. It’s all tremendously lockdown then lockdown. Tremendously sixth cup of tea. It’s all trial and error. All password and login. All [terribly] click the icon. It’s all topographically Melbourne. Tremendously trams. Terribly QR codes. It’s all typically long novel. Typically night lamp reading glasses. Truly Tolstoy come to think of it. It’s all terribly next strain. Totally neck strain. Torrentially then sunshine. All terrifically let’s take a walk. Terribly fox terrier.   

 

[terribly] Melbourne iPhone photograph 10 of 10: Peakhour has never been the same since that week. Platform 9, Southern Cross Station, 19^th of March 2020, 7:27 am.

 

Resilience

 I’ve started to see resilience not just as a faux virtue, but a replacement virtue for words that people have forgotten to use, or else avoid. Three genuine virtues being replaced by resilience are courage, fortitude, and forbearance. The difference between these three and resilience is suffering. Courage, for example, is borne of suffering, amongst other things. Resilience denies suffering; we don’t mention that, not here. What if you’re not resilient? Or not resilient enough? What if you don’t meet the undefined standards of true resilience? I expect [resilience] is silencing other virtues as well. Patience? No time for that.  

 

[resilience] Melbourne iPhone photograph 9 of 10: The city and the river at Spencer Street Bridge during the national bushfires, 14^th of January 2020, 10:47 am.

 

Split

Split theories are intrinsic to the mythology. Ringo left first, during the White Album; they patched it up with flowers. George left next, after a row about a plectrum or something. Now Paul says John broke up the band. Even though it took Paul decades to admit it wasn’t Yoko. Reports claim Paul shouldered the blame for decades. Say what? Everyone knows Paul was the only one who wanted it to keep going. Announcement. Unless they all wanted it to keep going. Obviously it wasn’t Linda. The breakup came in December 1980. After that everything was retrospective, including [split] talk.  

 

[split] Melbourne iPhone photograph 8 of 10: Southland carpark, Cheltenham, 29^th of October 2020, 7:07 am.

 

Unvaccinated

Reasons I’ve overheard myself for why people remain [unvaccinated] for coronavirus. Exceptionalism: If everyone else is vaccinated then I won’t catch covid. Inherited anxiety: The vaccines are not fully tested and I could get Alzheimer’s. Procrastination: I’ll do it next week; now for Netflix. Self-awareness: What if I have a rare blood clot condition? Fear: I don’t particularly like covid but I’m scared of vaccines. Politics: It’s a government social experiment they’re not telling us, because they wouldn’t, would they? Community spirit: Other people aren’t doing it, so neither am I. Moral righteousness: It’s my right to choose not to.

 

[unvaccinated] Melbourne iPhone photograph 7 of 10: Middle Park, 13^th of March 2020, 8:09 am. This historic photograph was taken over 18 months ago. It’s my regular tram stop to work with, on the left, the Melbourne Sports and Aquatic Centre and, the right, the gate to the Grand Prix at Albert Park Lake. The whole carpark area has been cordoned off while we await the government decision on that Friday morning not to hold the race due to covid. This was the day when Victorians realised the pandemic was going to affect everyone’s future planning. Within a month we would be working from home.

 

Line

 A young man finds an aptitude for drawing lines with black pen. He goes to the Big City with his black pen. Draws lines over notebooks, canvases, subways, hoardings. Draws energy: birth, life, death, dogs. Broken lines, dashes, zips, but truly one continuous [line]. With black pen he goes overseas. Draws all over Collingwood bricks, St. Kilda Road waterwall. One line at a time. Back in the Big City he draws all through his illness, over glass, flesh, sarcophaguses. The young man dies, leaving millions of lines over surfaces. He is an author who gives up words for black lines.

 

[line] Melbourne iPhone photograph 6 of 10: Entrance to the National Gallery of Victoria, St. Kilda Road, 2^nd of November 2019, 8:57 pm.

Childhood

 “Salt, vinegar, mustard, pepper/ If I dare I can do better.” The Skipping Girl was newest technology when she started jumping on the spot in 1936. Her model was Irene Barron, but everyone calls her Audrey. Unlike ‘Audrey’, neon technology cannot go faster or slower. Irene died last year at the age of 99. Across the street is a memorial to Ingvar Kamprad’s [childhood]. He lived on a farm named Elmtaryd, outside the Swedish village of Agunnaryd. At 15 he was bicycling to neighbours selling matches, Christmas decorations, ballpoint pens. Ingvar died three years ago at the age of 91.

 

[childhood] Melbourne iPhone photograph 5 of 10: The Skipping Girl sign in Victoria Street, Abbotsford, 25^th of March 2020, 9:18 am.

 

 

Palimpsest

 Sales pitch dad bad pun rain-soaked down peeled colouring grey. Replaced by bank hope sundried split squares unravelled sporadic lumps. Fresh offers disintegrated peep between striated best ever bargains sodden. Autumn unglued fashion sheets use-by-date lichen cornered slip charm fading. Teen graffiti obliterate latest models paper bubbled rainfall beneath stripe-stripped. Blossom specked wet wall musty flecked heralds death to eye-catchers. Distant allurements lining tin sheets wind ripped hail freeze curled. Papery vain promises vanish vague drenched dew-dropped under wallpaper updates. Sunset sullen skyhigh words merge through sunrise sudden what for. For whom now bare scrape lost for words hoarding [palimpsest].

 

[palimpsest] Melbourne iPhone photograph 4 of 10: Macleod Railway Station, Macleod Village, 18^th June 2021, 5:44 am.

 

Facebook

 It might be a hostile foreign power or simply a micro home entertainment unit. Its sovereignty is global, or perhaps no further than a boardroom of tech-heads. Six hours of downtime exposes the appetites of billions. It’s a disappearing diary scrolling down to logon time. It’s a daily point of reference, it’s for old people say the young people. A kaleidoscope of personal preferences, a selective slideshow of the self, hanging by a thread. It’s that, while conversely a confessional of emotions, a grab-bag of opinions, available to strangers. Business begets business until bust, rolling coverage over here in [facebook].

[facebook] Melbourne iPhone photograph 3 of 10: The government district, Macarthur Street, East Melbourne, 9^th September 2021, 8:42 am.

Nostril

 Complaints about face-veils have subsided. The city is in face-veils, the men also. Eye contact is fleeting. Friendliness is modulated by voice through face-veils: the well-tempered clavicle, tremulous trachea, the over-joyous hello. The new enemy is the [nostril]. Shops are hotbeds of nostrils. Public parks are on the nose, but more often off. Never were noses so beak-like, nostrils so evident. They are in-your-face. This morning, nostrils were up to 55% hi-visibility. It’s a shock. Have they been tested with pokers? Let’s hope so. They flare, they wrinkle, they refuse to cover up. Take a deep breath. Cross the street. 

[nostril] Melbourne iPhone photograph 2 of 10: Heidelberg looking east towards the Dandenongs, 1^st of July 2021, 5:10 pm.

Enough

How much land is enough? How much water? How many days and nights is enough? Never enough? How many words is enough? How many stories? The speech, rant, the pharmacy prescription, diplomatic intervention, the phonecall. How much silence is enough? How much of others is enough? Is there ever [enough]? How many flowers? A daisy, a bouquet, fields. How much money is enough? How much of enough is enough? How much return? How much sleep is enough? Or waking? How much of the morning is enough? When’s the break? How many cars are enough? How many trains? How much oil?

 

[enough] Melbourne iPhone photograph 1 of 10: Flinders Street Station and Southbank, 28^th of April 2021, 6:29 am.

Ennui

 Boredom is an expectation for many people, factored into their daily lives. Ennui is not counted on in the same way. Maybe that’s the difference between them. Boredom is wanting to be somewhere else at the time. Ennui knows we can only be here now; the self doesn’t like it. Ennui offers no effective way out. Absinthe will only prolong ennui. Or watching daily press conferences. Something is better than nothing? Not with [ennui]. Boredom is an alert to take control, change direction. Ennui knows it needs help, but what? Body, mind, and spirit must wait out this private lockdown.

Village

 Our local shops, not on any main road, are called the Village. Just going down to the Village, we announce, now we’re out of isolation. Villages dot the metropolis: Middle Park, Toorak, Montmorency. We smile to think of a shopping complex named Tooronga Village. Suburbs once villages side on to suburbs with Villages. Cars would form queues at Village Drive-Ins. This is not what our syphilitic founder had in mind. Did he ever imagine his place for a village, Bearbrass, would in a dozen years be named a City? Was Viscount Melbourne kept abreast, then retired outside Hatfield [village], Hertfordshire?

 

Photograph: Bridie and I are members of the Community Garden, located close to the Village. This means on Saturday we could collect our quota of tomato, zucchini, and pumpkin seedlings, though following covid-safe guidelines. We lined up in our cars at the Gardens, had our trays ready for the plants at the street gate, QR code, distribution, then drive off.

 

Respectable

An entire history of Naarm, or Melbourne, could be written around the dichotomy of ‘respectable and unrespectable’. Is John Batman, he of syphilitic nose, the founder? Hobart did a Nelson with Batman, turning a blind eye to his illegal forays into Kulin land. His crude treaties with owners, based on one-sided concepts of trade, may be reduced to meaninglessness. Unrespectable Bearbrass becomes [respectable] Melbourne, mellow in the mouth. The dichotomy is heard daily in a public discourse that will be all things to all Melburnians. The common touch trades respect with disrespect, gives with one hand, takes with the other.

 

O

 [O] of October. October of oranges. Oranges of off-season, organised, offered, opened. Otherwise occurring overall. Ontology of organisms. Orgasms of origin. Overtures of omnipotence. Overabundance of occasion, orientation, obstinacy, overdrive. Oodles of outcomes. Overlap of ornithology. Ornamentation of octosyllables. Orchestra of onomatopoeia. Odes of oxygen. Oceans of ozone, overwhelm, Odyssean. Obsidian overnight occlusions. Oscillations of octopus. Orbits of optics, ochre, opal. O’clocks of ordinary, obvious, oddity, opposite. Orders of otherwise, ostensible, outlawed, otiose. Objective opera omnia. Om often okay. Otherness of orb. Orb of October. October of ours. Orb of offertory. Obelisks of occupancy. Obituaries of oblivion. Oblique Orion overhead.

 

[O] of October.

 

October of oranges. Oranges of off-season, organised, offered, opened.

 

Otherwise occurring overall.

 

Ontology of organisms. Orgasms of origin. Overtures of omnipotence. Overabundance of occasion, orientation, obstinacy, overdrive. Oodles of outcomes.

 

Overlap of ornithology. Ornamentation of octosyllables. Orchestra of onomatopoeia. Odes of oxygen.

 

Oceans of overwhelm, ozone, Odyssean. Obsidian overnight occlusions. Oscillations of octopus.

 

Orbits of optics, ochre, opal.

 

O’clocks of ordinary, obvious, oddity, opposite.

 

Orders of otherwise, ostensible, outlawed, otiose. Objective opera omnia. Om often okay.

 

Otherness of orb. Orb of October. October of ours. Orb of offertory.

 

Obelisks of occupancy. Obituaries of oblivion. Oblique Orion overhead.