A Test of Poetry

What do you mean by rashes of ash? Is industry

systematic work, assiduous activity, or ownership

of factories? Is ripple agitate lightly? Are

we tossed in tune when we write poems? And

what or who emboss with gloss insignias of air?

Is the Fabric about which you write in the epigraph

of your poem an edifice, a symbol of heaven?

Does freight refer to cargo of lading carried

for pay by water, land or air? Or does it mean

payment for such transportation? Or a freight

train? When you say a commoded journey,

do you mean a comfortable journey or a good train

with well-equipped commodoties? But, then, why

do you drop the ‘a’ before slumberous friend? And

when you write, in “Why I Am Not a Christian”

You always throw it down / But you never

pick it up—what is it??

In “The Harbor of Illusion”, does vein

refer to a person's vein under his skin or

is it a metaphor for a river? Does lot

mean one’s fate or a piece of land?

And does camphor refer to camphor trees?

Moreover, who or what is nearing. Who or

what has fell? Or does fell refer to the

skin or hide of an animal? And who or what has

stalled? Then, is the thoroughfare of

noon's atoll an equivalent of the template?

In "Fear of Flipping" does flipping mean

crazy?

How about strain, does it mean

a severe trying or wearing pressure or

effect (such as a strain of hard work),

or a passage, as in piece of music?

Does Mercury refer to a brand of oil?

In the lines

shards of bucolic pastry anchored

against cactus cabinets, Nantucket buckets

could we take it as—pieces of pies

or tarts are placed in buckets (which

are made of wood from Nantucket)

anchored against cabinets (small

rooms or furniture?) with cactus?

What is nutflack?

I suppose the caucus of caucasians

refers to the white people’s meeting

of a political party to nominate candidates.

But who is Uncle Hodgepodge?

And what does familiar freight

to the returning antelope mean?

You write, the walls are our floors.

How can the walls be floors if the floors

refer to the part of the room which forms

its enclosing surface and upon which one

walks? In and the floors, like balls,

repel all falls—does balls refer to

nonsense or to any ball like a basket ball

or to guys? Or to a social assembly for

dancing? Falls means to descend

from higher to a lower

or to drop down wounded or dead?

But what is the so-called overall

mesh?

Is the garbage heap the garbage heap

in the ordinary sense? Why does

garbage heap exchange for so-called

overall mesh? Since a faker is

one who fakes, how can

arbitrary reduce to faker?

Who or what are disappointed

not to have been?

Does frames refer to form, constitution,

or structure in general? Or to a

particular state, as of the mind?

In the sentence,

If you don't like it

colored in, you can always xerox it

and see it all gray

--what is it? What does

colored in mean?

A few lines later you write,

You mean, image farm when you’ve got bratwurst—

Does bratwurst refer to sausage?

Does the line mean—the sausage

you saw reminded you of a farm which you imagined?

Does fat-bottom boats refer to boats with thick bottoms?

Is humble then humped used to describe the actions of one

who plays golf? In the phrase a sideshow freak—

the freak refers to a hippie? Sideshow refers to secondary

importance? Or an abnormal actor in the sideshow?

Then, who or what is linked with steam of pink. And

how about the tongue-tied tightrope stalker—

does the stalker refer to one who is pursuing

stealthily in the act of hunting game? The stalker

is a witness at first and then a witless witness?

You write The husks are salted:

what kind of nut husks can be salted for eating?

What does bending mean—to become curved,

crooked, or bent? Or to bow down in submission

or reverence, yield, submit? Does bells

refer to metallic sounding instruments or

a kind of trousers?

Just a few lines later you have the phrase

Felt very poured. Who felt poured? Toys?

Is humming in the sense of humming a song?

Stepped into where? Not being part of what?

In “No Pastrami” (Walt! I’m with you in Sydney / Where

the echoes of Mamaroneck howl / Down the outback’s

pixilating corridors)—does the pastrami refer

to a highly seasoned shoulder cut of beef? Is

Mamaroneck a place in the U.S. where wild oxes howl?

I take it corridors refers to the passageway

in the supermarket? Could I read the poem as—

The speaker is doing shopping in a supermarket

in Sydney; he is walking along the eccentric

passageways among the shelves on which goods

are placed; he does not want to buy the pastrami

as he seems to have heard the echoes of wild oxes

howling in the U.S. while he addresses Walt Whitman?

In “No End to Envy”, does the envy refer to admire or

in the bad sense?

Source: My Way: Speeches and Poems (The University of Chicago Press, 1999)