Comment: I got a little blackout-happy on this one and accidentally blacked out two words I had meant to keep, so I wrote them back in between the lines. Whoops! Again, I found this very fun. Really enjoying this little process!
Continuum of Youth
From a Smithsonian article on gumbo. No really, I’m serious.
The text reads:
To create understanding, I asked the usual.
Beyond this regard, I imagined
inspiration or leftover odds,
disparate parts, in my perspective-
my friend, waking life…
everyday summer not required.
Closer to the continuum
of my youth,
the truth is conventional
to exotic.
Note: Even a lengthy article on gumbo can be fascinating if written well. I ended up reading the entire original article before marking it up, and I quite enjoyed it! 😉
I’m fascinated by the word choice in your poem! Mine are often fairly simplistic, but these I enjoy. The language is incredible. I wonder what you meant by “the truth is conventional/to exotic”?
LOL! I’m super glad you enjoyed the poem! The funny thing is the only way it seems I can write poems like this is to scan articles and pick out the words. I was just talking with a writer friend the other day, and we both are in agreement that our usual poems “make too much sense” for the common lit mag, lol. I have read many lit mags recently in my submission process, and every single one of the poems in them leaves me cock-eyed and scratching my head. There IS meaning there, yes, but it is so convulted and twisted that no two people will arrive at the same conclusion. Which, I suppose, is the draw of those types of poems. But that is not the purpose of my usual poetry. I have a clear purpose which I wish to convey to others, I have emotions I want them to feel. I don’t want them to wonder what the hell I’m talking about, I want them to be certain. So… doing this found poetry thing seems to help me be alot more abstract with things, which is why it cracks me up you asked about the truth line. 😉 If I am to be honest, I myself have only the faintest idea of what this thing means!!! So I really can’t tell you what I meant. It means whatever you think it means, in true artsy fartsy literary poem fashion, ehehehe. I personally have a vague idea of what it means to me, of course, but I’m not sure I can put it into words that will make any sense. Out of curiosity though, how do you read it for yourself? … if you can find words to describe it, anyway. 😛
I have noticed that about literary magazines! I read “truth” to be separate from “exotic,” which here seems to mean something outside of truth–I don’t want to say fictional, but surreal, or something like that. So when compared to “exotic,” truth is conceived to be “conventional.” 🙂 Does that make sense?
That DOES make sense… and I totally see now how you could take that meaning from that line! But it is actually very different than the way I read it, lol. That is just too crazy, just a very simple change in perspective on the words and you get two different meanings! My intent I guess was more along the lines of: the truth can be both conventional and exotic, or like a range in between those two things, depending on who you are and your life experiences up until the moment, different people would read the same truth as conventional or exotic depending on their personality/experiences/beliefs. Does that make any sense? 😉