My First Poetry Book Vol. 3: Other Poems (2000-2001)

Vespers #6: With Sun Paintings & "Found" Art

    
       the builder came
       again today
       with his glue-gun
       and his slow
       thoughtful
       voice;

       “this work,” he said,
       “my hearts just
       not in it.
       I like banging nails
       but it's not art”
   

       at three
       in the morning
       drunk, broke
       & hungry
       i drift to sleep
       with the light
       left on
       & a moth
       wriggling
       on the
       floor
       about to die
    

    
       looking out the window,
       obsessed
       with small gods

       like falling water—

       summer is here
       and then
       gone
    

     
       simplicity sets the scene:

       horizon awash
                      with blueish
                      cloud,
       a cold wind plays
       with loose paper

              & mind the door
                  it doesn't always give
                       that satisfying
                           CLICK
      

     
       ocean papers
       sand,
       smooths rocks

       the sea has final
       word
     

   
       even gods die,

       the crack of
       the gun
       moments after
       the
       action
   

     
       t
       th
       the
       the t
       the ty
       the typ
       the type
       the typer
       calls

       a bird without
       its
       song
   

     
       Poems by Dick Whyte;

            Assorted "found" artworks
                rescued from roadsides, rubbish-bins,
                    and bedroom floors;

                        Sun Paintings (c. 2000).
    

NOTE: Unlike the previous two volumes of my early poems (here and here), which had a few light edits—but nothing drastic—3 of these 7 are quite heavily edited and no longer resemble the poems I wrote at the time. All the words are from the original, they’ve just been cut in different sequences, and sometimes significantly reduced in length. As French poet Paul Valery (1871-1945) is often quoted; “A poem is never finished, only abandoned”—itself cut from a much longer paragraph, from his essay ‘Au Sujet du Cimetière Marin’ (1933);

“In the eyes of those who anxiously seek perfection, a work is never truly completed—a word that for them has no sense—but abandoned; and this abandonment, of the book to the fire or to the public, whether due to weariness or to a need to deliver it for publication, is a sort of accident, comparable to the letting-go of an idea that has become so tiring or annoying that one has lost all interest in it.”

I have never considered any of my poems finished. Some of them are fairly stable, but none are static. And if an old poem can be sliced and diced to make me happier today than it did back then, I’ll always pick pleasure over preservation. Each iteration another accident in the poem’s becoming: unfinished. What about you, dear readers? What is your relationship to re-editing old work? I’d love to hear about it in the comments . . .

Thanks everyone for coming on this journey with me through my early poems, and drawings, and paintings, and things. I really appreciate all the comments, shares, and general support. These are the last of the early poems I’ll be sharing from my first poetry book, Poems 1999-2001 (2002). Next up, some unpublished bits and pieces from later in the 2000s!

Vespers

Poems by Dick Whyte, and other miscellanea. Explore the archive . . .