BOOKS
I have scarcely begun to spea k aga in-already each
sent ence seems like a dream of wh a t I perceive.
"Someone has ju st di ed! "
- " Yes, but in th e outl ands." -
- "Something is just being turn ed in side Ollt !" -
- "Yes, but in the outl ands." -
- "Somethin g is just go ing CRAAK!"
-"Yes. but because
we
can spea k of it it is a d ream ."
" Di stinni on s"
129
In
"Distin cti ons," as with th e other poems in
T,h e lnnerworld,
the
page upon whi ch a poem appea rs can a lmost be seen as a stage, with
each seri es in the poem coming from a differel1l pl ace.
In
o ther words,
one is struck by a powerful spa ti al sense in reading these poems.
In
Nonsense and Happ iness,
the fo ll owing collecti on , thi s spati al orienta–
tion, or di sorientati on , as th e case may be, is much more integrated,
primaril y because a sing le " I" apparentl y presents each poem. How–
ever, as this " I" records the coll apsing of vario us sys tems of meaning, it
al so bea rs witn ess
to
the coll apse of the subj ective sense tha t had been
identifi ed with these meanin gs; the encounters with no nsense are
confrontation s with the non-I:
This fall time passed a lmost without me
and my life stood as still as then
when I h ad felt so low
I wanted to learn to type
and waited evenings in th e windowl ess anteroom
I was not in despa ir merely di scontent.
I had no feeling fo r myself a nd no feeling
for an ything else.
. . . I had once kn own how I o ught to live
but now everythin g was fo rgotten .
I would not even perceive a fart
as somethin g ph ys ica l.
" Life Witho ut Poetry"
Each of the poems in
N onsense and Happ iness
traces a tabl eau of
disconnectedness; in each , th e method of trac ing, tha t is, writing, is
