If you added up all the time I wondered about time, I’d have years to add to my life
The paradox is that creating the more democratic world we seek requires
more than power. It demands alliances, institutions and trust. Doing the right
If you travel with a group for weeks, especially
one shielding you from chem-bio attacks,
you’re likely to stay loyal to those you’re with
He let light passed the door, disrupting his children’s dreams.
When they surfaced, figures flashed, edges flooded the recesses,
irretrievable, blacks become blacker, whites whiter. It illuminates,
eliminates excesses, emphasizing shape, or it blinds, binding
When I walked, I followed. When I ran, I ran faster,
resolving at the same time I dissolved. I stopped time I
started. Not to be confused, or refused, I refueled and lit
the fuse. In the light I reflected what I refracted, exploding
my eye’s expectations. When I came back to my senses I meant it
He recalls Agincourt in 1415, during the Hundred Years’ War,
when the French barons, whose army outnumbered
the exhausted British four to one, insisted on a
glorious cavalry charge against British infantry
armed with longbows. They thereby handed over
the crown of France to the England king, Henry V
We can’t make them for our children, can’t make them less difficult,
can’t predetermine what they will become. He was someone’s son, a
boy before a monster. Who can defuse the bomb? His father
could replant corn if it didn’t come up. He could never replant
his son. I’ll look for the bud branched off, kicked off the tree,
that poked us in the eye. We rub the wound away;
he paid for it with his life
from 7 x 7, Otoliths 2010. I was asked recently to explain these poems. I've done so in an interview with Jeff Hansen:
http://experimentalfictionpoetry.blogspot.com/2010/07/interview-with-poet-crag-hill-on-his.html
Hansen: All the poems in 7x7 take their name from a card from a standard playing deck. How does this randomness fit with the formal discontinuities in other parts of the poems?
Hill: I cannot recall if I chose playing cards to title the poems before or after other aspects of the project in place (ultimately each title corresponded to the card I slid from the diminishing deck). One of the 7s in 7 x 7 represents the number of days in a week. Thus the first day of the week has one line, the second day two lines, etc. (I have used the seven days of the week before-see The Week, The Runaway Spoon Press, 1991-to structure a writing project). The other 7 denotes the number of different sources I worked with to write the content of each stanza. I used seven playing cards to select each source for the day. If I pulled an Ace from the short stack, I selected from poetry in my notebook. For a 2, I selected prose from my notebook. With a 3, I chose a quote from a book I was reading. With a 4, I rewrote a passage from a book I was reading, changing the sense while retaining as much of the sound as I could. Drawing a 5, I quoted news from the internet or magazines (primarily Newsweek). With a 6, I quoted from a newspaper (most commonly The Moscow-Pullman Daily News, circulation 8000). Pulling out a 7, I quoted-or slightly misquoted/misheard-television and radio programs. For instance, in "Queen of Hearts," the first line is a taken from a prose passage in my notebook about Ken Kesey's Sometimes a Great Notion. The next two lines are quotations from a political news show. The next three lines are a rewriting of a passage from something I was reading (I didn't keep a record of these texts). The next four lines are a poetry excerpt taken from my notebook, a poem written on a drive across Montana to visit family in Wisconsin. For the next five lines I again drew an Ace and excerpted from a poem based on a dream. The last two stanzas are direct quotations from my reading (direct quotations of text are marked by italics)
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