flipped the script

In a book of poems by a known language poet I ran into a series of pages printed upside down. I thought at first it was a ‘dada’ move, but then looking at the page numbers it was clearly a printing error.

near perfect if not true

Even as misremembered, the line was near perfect.

sidestep the missteps

Part of the ‘anxiety of influence’ relates to the effort not to repeat the errors of the precursors.

narrowed to error

Constraints are both opportunities for escape and discovery and pinch points where many forced errors occur.

mistake proof

Blunders, once recognized, become the poem’s building blocks.

slowly closing in

Each translation by virtue of its errors makes the next translation closer to right.

language alchemy

In the alchemy of language that is poem-making, gold is the elusive element. So, in that pseudo-science of trial and error, we must trust the errors.