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Interactionality

Usually poetic conversations between authors and texts.

Or Would You Stand At The Shore And Pray Tsunamis At It?

2/16/2017

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I'm going back and rereading the poetry books that initially excited me about the written and spoken word. First up, Mark Doty's Atlantis. This is the second of probably three interactions about how my response to this book changed over twenty years.

The first one is here.

Rebuilding Atlantis At Twenty-Nine


1.  The Shape Of Things

The subject of the night's
        workshop is line breaks
                and how they shape the

way the reader interprets
        the poem. I hate American
                waterfall tercets. In fact,

all unnecessarily shaped
        stanzas detract from my
                interest in what a poet is

trying to say. I understand
        they think it looks pretty.
                It gives me a headache.

I still love Mark Doty's
        work even if I don't like
                how it's laid on the page.


2. Emerald Legacy

If you look closely at this
handful of sand Turquoise
and emerald Sapphire and
crushed pearl All this silt
All this emerald Sand is only brown
from a distance Shattered
rocks Crushed coral Once
royal and thriving Now
loose foothold for children
to build into wet castles
Everything beautiful looks
plain from a distance
There is nothing alluring
when the polish has been
ground into 
                        well 
                                 grounds
Emerald at fingertips So
what Tiny grains of quartz
small enough to sprinkle
over corn flakes Beauty
tastes terrible Gets stuck
in teeth Opal amongst
beige Everything looks
so beige until you really
stare Flakes of emerald
sparkle through the blah
There is always something living
                                                   thriving despite
the paper bag covering 
our textbook lives Always
something emerald if
you know how to look
Not where to How to 


3. Grief Is Exhausting And Everywhere

I didn't see ryan's sickness until
it killed him I didn't look
for comfort in shoots of dune
grass I didn't imagine our future
coming to a point 
Curling to fist

I didn't imagine we needed 
a lighthouse to protect us Shimmer
of crest Agate shadows 

It wasn't
until i had to turn around
that i ever noticed
the shape of my own
shadow lacking
his beside me
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Would You Rebuild Atlantis If You Knew You Would Drown There?

2/15/2017

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I'm going back and rereading the poetry books that initially excited me about the written and spoken word. First up, Mark Doty's Atlantis. This is the first of probably three interactions about how my response to this book changed over twenty years.

Sidenote, the title is a line from my poem, How To Survive A Sixty Hour Work Week On Just Above Minimum Wage. While it is, of course, a reference to the lost city, it is also a reference to Mark Doty's book and the time of my life when I first read it.

Atlantis At Nineteen

1. Colorblindness

Sun starved leaves
A handful of wet beach ready for sculpture
The color of a paper bag under transparent tape
                                        protecting textbooks from my clumsy adolescence
Horseshoe crab shell
All of these things we'd touched together And all i could think of
when you took off your hat in your parents' basement was
You have brown hair

It was only in the darkness that I could realize
the misdiagnosis of your hair color
Two years of loving someone without
noticing this basic physical trait

I was still flash cards at lust
Heart
Sex
Breath
Touch

At a bar with my coworkers 
from the Reconnaissance Faire
I didn't note 
the leather taut
atlassing the twin planets of the wax maiden
as the exhaust of her day and her bourbon
warmed my ear

I thought why is this woman 
blowing in my ear?

Everything so straight
                           forward

I didn't even know her name
just the job she weekended for two months of the year
The best part of her year
when her ex took her two twelve year old sons
and she dipped hands and roses into hot wax
and blew hot air into the ears of nineteen year old gay boys
too paralyzed to turn their heads

I was of course staring at you
a single row of straight white stones
the lower shelf never
cresting your bottom lip

On the drive home you kissed your own hot air
towards me without so much as leaning closer

This was how I learned to love with distance



2. Strangers & Family Members Are Fiction

I did not choose Mark Doty's "Long Point Light"
                               for its language
                               for how I would later imagine it
                                      an apt description of our relationship

You liked lighthouses

I was too stiff for "Homo
Shall Not Inherit" 

The assignment
                               read a poem to a diverse group of people
                               ask them to tell you what the poem means

Diverse on Cape Cod
               in 1998
               meant my ashen mother
                            my pasty boss
                            the blanched friends of the pale children I nannied
                            the cobweb customers at my corporate record store job
                            my eggshell psychology classmates
Diverse meant not the same age
                                                    job
                                                    level of education

All these diverse listeners patiently described what this poem
which was so obviously about how 
every day was a new opportunity to be honest with you and
                                                                                                myself
was so obviously about how I could see metaphor only
in things you cared about
All of these diverse listeners presented me with their own
incorrect translations of this obvious poem
Mistaking Doty's hazing and
                                flickering as an invitation to 
build their own lighthouse to 
monument

I bought whiteboard 
I mod podged photos of your favorite lighthouses
  printed out all these wrong interpretations of what was
obviously our poem and threw away everyone else's truth

I drew crude approximations of boats
             emerald fiberglass like your favorite color of seaglass
             polyurethaned wood like your hair
             silver like your car
             barn red like your duvet

Each boat labeled with the description of an imaginary person
The waves beneath them
                    fake quotes I attributed to them
                                          each one a different way I looked at the poem
                             except 
                             of course 
                                               yours

Who else had ever had an opinion that mattered?


3. There Is Never Enough Ocean

I was twenty and selfish without understanding what my self was
                                              like everytwenty
                                              like everyyounglover

I read Atlantis but came away with only "Long Point Light"
  said everything else was ocean and shimmer
I had enough ocean around me
          enough shimmer when I tried to look to the future
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Fugueazi

8/29/2016

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In college, I took a class called Poets In Massachusetts, where we studied sometimes localish poets but sometimes stretched just what it meant to be "in Massachusetts". For one of the final projects, we were asked to take a poem by an author we'd read, and ask several non-poetry readers what they thought of it. We, then, posted the answers and collage-type images onto giant whiteboards and displayed them on the walls of the classroom during the final weeks.

I chose Mark Doty's "Long Point Light" from Atlantis. If I still had that stupid whiteboard, I might have cheated and posted some of the quotes here and called it a day. The project certainly created "an interaction".

Instead, I've gone back to one of my favorite Doty poems, "Gross Fugue", and put my own spin on what a fugue would look like as a poem. I might come back to this poem and give it a more satisfactory ending, but I was really feeling Doty's last line There is no resolution in the fugue​.

The Fugue Electric, Unfinished
​Adam Stone

I go for three weeks without
power because i will not be
home for most of them and
when i am home it will be
daybright and the breeze
keeps everything cool enough
          There are boats
          perched Obese
          vultures
          precarious in
          exhausted trees
          still dizzy from
          hurricane So not having
          power seems trivial
          Our house stands
          Our trees bereft
          of anything but birds and
          unmoored trash
I have a battery powered lamp
for camping but no desire to camp
outside of my home Finally
this little lamp has purpose
                    Daylight is for the kayaks
                    The rubber rafts
                    claim the 9-5
                    We do not need electricity
                    at night we have fire
                    and all the appropriate snacks
                    to eat like spoiled scouts
          The ladder to the zip line
          still standing though half
          the tree it was moored to
          collapsed into the climbing wall

all i do is talk these days . those days . all days . but i won't bring anyone into my powerlessness . too dark . of course . too phosphorous my faults . the apartment shambled by a lack of light . piles of laundry . sleep in the daytime . talk to no one but cats . no one needs to see

                    Cliff is the only one of us
                    not allowed a lighter
                    A book of matches
                    Allowed to carry wood
                    to the clearing but not
                    place it in the flames
When i am awake during the day
i leave the house lit by the sun but
barren I go off to the cofeehouses
to charge my technology for the
coming darkness
          How fortunate this
          hurricane in august
          The camp asunder
          The boathouse
          secured before the storm
          The canoes The kayaks
          The grub tubs The sunfish
          all safe But the windows
          lanced by branches and
          a door flown off
          the archery shed
                    Cliff set fire to the fields
                    behind our camp last summer
I forgot to take my name off
the account of a previous address
          How long until the boats
          collapse what's left of
          the trees?
I never bothered to call
the electric company
                    It burned for an hour
                    before anyone noticed
Now I'm paying for it
but with insomnia
instead of money

there was also the summer we cottaged next to our cousins until our new house was finished . a full summer of pond but no shower . minnows don't survive long as pets . flushing because at least running water if not light . but a real house just next door . also empire strikes back sleeping bag . generic flashlight . unscary ghost stories . the only jokes that stayed with me were unfunny and racist . surely someone told a joke without prejudice . lunches in the gazebo . a terrified parakeet . watching dragonflies fuck . ghost stories in the empty cottages . canada geese alarm clocks . big hiss . no electricity but access to a motorboat . jet skis . too young to waterski . cookouts on the other side of the lake . people who used the word cottage to describe houses bigger than any i've ever lived in .

                    Cliff never told me
          Raking the branches
          off the beach
                    how the fire smelled
Every mattress seems
alive with crumbs
                    why he did it
          Plastic over windows
when it's too dark
to examine
                    even though we
                    shared a tent
          Paid overtime for
Insomnia because of
          clean-up crew
                    He didn't want
                    witnesses even
          The satisfaction of
too much darkness
                    after the fact
     
     a job must done
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    Interactionality

    An ongoing conversation between writers and the text that they're reading.

    Adam Stone is reading multiple collections of poetry each week, and producing a piece of writing or a series of prompts inspired by the text. It might be a poem in the voice of the author. It might be a memory involving the person who suggested the book to him. He might steal the title of a poem and use it to create a collage about his oh-so-inspiring childhood.

    To help keep him accountable, he's asked other writers that he both likes and likes working with to join him in writing their own interaction or two. With their permission, some of their interactions will also be posted here, clearly tagged with their names.

    There might even be interaction between Adam's interactions and an interaction written by someone else. The only rules of this project is to read more poetry and create more art.

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  • Tips From The Bar
  • Honest Conversation Is Overrated
  • Interactionality
  • Popcorn Culture
  • Comically Obsessed