thoughts in progress, 2: breaking Tara down

can't read a poem without tearing it apart.

i know no other way; never studied ways to read poems
-- clearly -- just do what i can to make some sort of meaning.

need to do this because it's my way of thinking; have to make a mess of things, always, still, before i can fully appreciate the intricacy, beauty, brilliance of the thing's workings, the parts' fit.

i assume there's that in every thing.

need to do this (might as well admit it now since it will be evident at some point soon if it is not so already) because it's damn fun to throw a vase across the room, smashing it to bits, find all the pieces, and put it back together again. i like the vase with glue scars, sharp edges, tiny airholes, bumpy (hiero)glyphs better than i did the unbubbled one that used to sit on the shelf; this one shows the signs of me and you.

poems use words for the same reason: to break the flow, cut a new tangent. so doing it back, to instate yet another oozeway, makes poetry, making the poem better than it was before.

like ripping a tshirt, or careening off the stage. learned that from 70s/80s ps.

now i'm learning about her nuance: subtlety summons through association, reconfiguration.

this is a subtle poem, so here goes:

the title, "Tara" -- plantation in Gone with the Wind -- Civil War -- racial, economic divide, brother fighting brother, amputations (Iraq?)-- tara, an edible fern (Scarlett should have known; she wouldn't have gone hungry the first time) -- tara = ta ta (so long to all that) -- tara, a mnemotechnic (or mnemoglyph) exclamation (saying the name, Tara: the word lingers, hangs into the future, linguistic artifact turns sculpture, the plantation in ruination, a way of life gone forever).