1M
ALICIA OSTRIKER
in the boat, the lines are the sides of the boat, the thoughts are in
the man's mind, the lines are the frame of his thinking, the boat
is
the mind, the mind is a boat); contrast between strict linearity and
free room; yet they balance; openness is bounded, boundaries contain
openness; yet too, no boundary lines fore and aft; so the boat-mind
moves forward, perhaps; or is by nature unenclosed as well as en–
closed; or we see but a segment? Then too it is a red-boat on the
outside but a bed-boat on the inside, so the space of the poem is
"objective" at the border between itself and not-itself, and "sub–
jective" in its middle, like us all. None of these effects could exist
without the spatial play. Williams's "The Red Wheelbarrow" comes
close in tone, partly because its short lines effect a comparable break–
up of syntax and allow a sense of space within and around the poem,
partly because the poem contains some semantic equivalent of spatial
clues in its phrasing: "upon," "glazed with," "beside:"
so much depends
upon
a red wheel
barrow
glazed with ram
water
beside the white
chickens.
Now consider what different things are done with
time
in the
next three poems. In Ronaldo Azerado's "Velocidade," the VVV
transcription of sound of motor hums along and then suddenly van–
ishes into its significance as the final line shoots into consciousness.
This might be the equivalent of the way a car approaching from a
distance suddenly seems to speed up at the moment it passes you. In
.landI's "film," reproduced here in its actual tiny size, the illusion of
continuity in film is reduced to its mechanics because optic sensations
are forced into quick jittery time units. Reading this poem seems far
more difficult than an ordinary act of reading or gazing, but the dif–
fic~lty
heightens consciousness. JandI's gloss on the poem states, "this
poem
is
a film. There are two actors, i and
1.
The action starts in
