on Allam & Bennett’s Tongue Ticking “Steering” from Tongue Ticking By Stacey Allam & John M. Bennett Luna Bisonte Prods 2013 If we add them together — the two minds of the authors and the third mind created through their collaboration, plus my two minds as a reader (the first mind with its first thought, which Ginsberg and Trungpa have called the best thought, and the second mind, which Chester A. Burnett aka Howlin Wolf has in his “Killing Floor” warned us not to ignore ) — we have five minds to act as a kind of steering committee as we navigate this windstorm, maybe a couch, no, curtains flapping in the wind, down by the sea, dustpan in hand, prepared to do battle with the wiggling hanger. To set the scene:
She didn’t know what would cover the tracks in fruit stripe gum
And she also didn’t know:
what would wiggle in the dripping cushions
But she did know that, whatever was happening with the cushions and the tracks, it would be happening while:
the hands that cracked the pink sea shell counterclockwise held the dustpan gripping through the windstorm
While she was wearing a curtain for a dress, and holding a hanger:
that patterned the afterthought of a steering wheel.
I don’t think Allam and Bennett counted anything while writing this poem, which is as it should be, but I have counted a few things while reading and rereading it. The poem has 15 lines. We might locate it in the neighborhood of the sonnet. If guilt by association counts for anything during the reading of a poem, then we might spend a valuable minute considering why “Steering” is not a truncated caudate sonnet. The rhythmic patterns are irregular, flexible, permeable, malleable, wrought with the surety of long experience and the solidity of studied craftsmanship. We can be forgiven if we are reminded of the idea of the variable foot. I counted the syllables, line by line: 4 4 2 5 6 4 5 4 4 4 6 7 4 3 9
I also counted the words per line: 3 3 2 5 5 2 5 4 1 3 4 6 3 2 6
Arithmetic alone will not reveal the structure of this poem. The idea in itself of a discernable pattern in the distribution of stresses also will not perpetrate the crime of solidity upon such a porous muscle of experiences and beliefs. If you think you understand this poem, then you need to read it again. Read it until you are certain that it works, and until you are equally as certain that you don’t know how it works. It is tight as a bell, timed to the ancient tunes slowly taut. It has not followed any of the rules. 04.02.2024 |
