Nothing to Say & Saying It: Tim Eitel - What would this look like as a poem?

Wednesday, January 16, 2008

Leipzig

Mondrian

Empty Area

Pond

At 1/17/2008 4:04 PM, Justin Evans said...: Sometimes the conversation
goes bad. Sometimes
there aren’t enough words
to suffice your thoughts—
when a blank wall of silence
indicates, as James Baldwin said,
that too much has happened
to articulate, as if everyone
has come to an impasse.

Symmetry alone will not solve
this. Free floating thoughts
without a flight plan are doomed
from the start, will fall to earth
like a rock, its declining arc
a secondary sway of guilt.

There are always two views—
Sometimes more. Each empty room
tells a different story to new eyes.
What chance do you or I have
of seeing the same face appear
from beneath the pale, mottled paint?
At 1/17/2008 4:55 PM, John Gallaher said...: And yet the same face does appear,
sometimes masked as two women
walking by a pond, or the light
across intersecting walls.
At 1/17/2008 7:28 PM, Justin Evans said...: John:

Thanks! I tried about 7 or 8 different ways to end it, but I struck out every time.

Your ending is really the spirit of those paintings.
At 1/18/2008 1:34 PM, John Gallaher said...: And thanks to you. When I posted this, I wasn't really thinking of one writing toward it, but trying to pair it with a poet (Mark Strand, perhaps?) . . . when really, your answer is the better answer to questions of this sort.