LETTER FROM A POET[i] TO HER PUBLISHER
Dear Publisher (aka Tony)
To all appearances
a poet on a rope from the ceiling.
Search for whatever has made the poet’s lips rise
in this city at this last hour,
perhaps the perfection of the noose that will find him,
dead and working, behind his settled eyes.
A book is a noose, where words are held, where the author has left. Each word the poet caught and tamed but they never made a book. That was for your catholic lasso – the snare of humility and discernment, attention and appreciation. With it you gathered a herd. All of us jostling and bellowing and emailing. One can only imagine the emails! Sitting here with a cat on my lap as I yet again hit send to [email protected] (cc’d, of course, to [email protected]), I imagine you with a cat on your lap:
I read the cat
because the cat
wants me to read him
instead of my
book of poetry
This is a favour
to the cat
I love the cat
He reads well
Some people say they are well read but there is no-one better read than the editor, the publisher – for our purposes, the ‘word-tycoon’ – who finds what has been written (but has not yet been found), who can give the world the writing it didn’t even know how to look for because he knows how to recognize the words that form part of the ‘good conversation’:
I bury the box of unread books.
There is a dog in my neighbourhood
with a nose for good conversation.
He comes sniffing around
when the gardener says
‘The cemetery was here from the beginning.’
And it has all been here from the beginning – and is going the same way in the end – under all our noses, before all our eyes. The trick, though, is to see. For that you need to know how to look. And to know how to look you need to know a fair bit about yourself (without any bullshit). You have to be aware of your inclinations, your predispositions, and your desires. More than that, you have to be on guard against them so that you can properly acquaint yourself with your dislikes, your biases and your always unreasonable first impressions. A great editor and publisher relishes searching for himself as the needle in this haystack because he knows that when you truly find yourself you find others. He knows to look everywhere: in the fridge, on the internet, under the house:
Suddenly I have appeared here
in myself
and the rest of my life
is either gone
or taken by surprise.
No more
dressing up like dead people
while still alive
or keeping myself occupied
by turning unseen
in the casket.
Now I am
a rhinoceros drinking whiskey
and fifteen tonnes
of love-jelly.
Birds burst into me
because the sky is my heart
and seven maggots
travel in seven directions
to stretch the world
with beginnings.
I am suffused
with the final portrayal
of criticism and the deletion
of all my whiz.
And I kept the same job
right up till the end.
Poets are often found
under the house.
THANKYOU Tony, for finding me.
In eternal copyright
Margie (aka MTC Cronin)
______________________
[1] You are only a poet to a reader (who may be your publisher!). I shall leave it up to Tony to define ‘publisher’ – perhaps his definition would shock all of us!
Dear Publisher (aka Tony)
To all appearances
a poet on a rope from the ceiling.
Search for whatever has made the poet’s lips rise
in this city at this last hour,
perhaps the perfection of the noose that will find him,
dead and working, behind his settled eyes.
A book is a noose, where words are held, where the author has left. Each word the poet caught and tamed but they never made a book. That was for your catholic lasso – the snare of humility and discernment, attention and appreciation. With it you gathered a herd. All of us jostling and bellowing and emailing. One can only imagine the emails! Sitting here with a cat on my lap as I yet again hit send to [email protected] (cc’d, of course, to [email protected]), I imagine you with a cat on your lap:
I read the cat
because the cat
wants me to read him
instead of my
book of poetry
This is a favour
to the cat
I love the cat
He reads well
Some people say they are well read but there is no-one better read than the editor, the publisher – for our purposes, the ‘word-tycoon’ – who finds what has been written (but has not yet been found), who can give the world the writing it didn’t even know how to look for because he knows how to recognize the words that form part of the ‘good conversation’:
I bury the box of unread books.
There is a dog in my neighbourhood
with a nose for good conversation.
He comes sniffing around
when the gardener says
‘The cemetery was here from the beginning.’
And it has all been here from the beginning – and is going the same way in the end – under all our noses, before all our eyes. The trick, though, is to see. For that you need to know how to look. And to know how to look you need to know a fair bit about yourself (without any bullshit). You have to be aware of your inclinations, your predispositions, and your desires. More than that, you have to be on guard against them so that you can properly acquaint yourself with your dislikes, your biases and your always unreasonable first impressions. A great editor and publisher relishes searching for himself as the needle in this haystack because he knows that when you truly find yourself you find others. He knows to look everywhere: in the fridge, on the internet, under the house:
Suddenly I have appeared here
in myself
and the rest of my life
is either gone
or taken by surprise.
No more
dressing up like dead people
while still alive
or keeping myself occupied
by turning unseen
in the casket.
Now I am
a rhinoceros drinking whiskey
and fifteen tonnes
of love-jelly.
Birds burst into me
because the sky is my heart
and seven maggots
travel in seven directions
to stretch the world
with beginnings.
I am suffused
with the final portrayal
of criticism and the deletion
of all my whiz.
And I kept the same job
right up till the end.
Poets are often found
under the house.
THANKYOU Tony, for finding me.
In eternal copyright
Margie (aka MTC Cronin)
______________________
[1] You are only a poet to a reader (who may be your publisher!). I shall leave it up to Tony to define ‘publisher’ – perhaps his definition would shock all of us!