you talking to me

So many poets speak about not being in control of a poem’s making, as if some divine inspiration came over them or the poem had somehow been dictated out of the air around them. It’s you, it’s all you…get over it.

air and light

The poem may be a closed shutter, but you should push open the louvres a bit to let some air and light in.

like air

reading is often a big help
but wherever you turn
you are surrounded by language
like the air

—John James, “A Theory of Poetry,” Poets on Writing: Britain, 1970-1991 (Macmillan Academic and Professional, Ltd, 1992) edited by Denise Riley

hung in space and silence

     My own notion of a poetry reading is quite different. I want the poet to talk about his poems as little as possible, and not so much about the poems as about something one step removed. The voice in which he does his talking unfortunately is the same voice the poor poems must borrow. The more we hear him the less we may be able to hear them.
     I should like poems hung, one at a time, like Japanese pictures, on the exquisite air, each poem surrounded by space and silence.

—Robert Francis, The Satirical Rogue on Poetry (U. of Massachusetts Press, 1968).

stuck there

Laughs leave the body, lighter than air; choked sobs stick inside the throat forever.

mark making

Stone, paper, pixels, air, mind…poems will try to fix upon anything

deflategate: please squeeze harder

Reading through various poetry books one wishes that more poets preferred their books with less air in them.

brussels lace

     My work, whatever form it may take, is seen as mischief, as lawlessness, as an accident. But that’s how I like it, so I agree. I subscribe to it with both hands.
      It is a question of how you look at it. What I prize in the doughnut is the hole. But what about the dough of the doughnut? You can gobble up the doughnut, but the hole will still be there.
      Real work is Brussels lace, the main thing in it is what holds the pattern up: air, punctures, truancy.

—Osip Mandelstam, "Fourth Prose," The Noise of Time: Selected Prose (Northwestern Univ. Press, 1993), translated by Clarence Brown.

shuttered poem

The lines like louvers shut tight against all air and light.

published in air

A poet whose poems were only published in air—that is, read aloud.

higher air

Poem as prayer rug. Poem as prayer flag. Poem as prayer air.