Word: poem
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...poem's structural twists are made in their content rather than in their syntax: Wright moves much more quickly from localized scenes to global concepts in the prose poems than elsewhere. In "On Having My Pocket Picked In Rome," he writes...
WHICH IS NOT TO SAY the prose poems lack structure. The adjectives are often extravagant--"hilarious and hellish little boys," he writes in "Old Bud"--but they serve to inject the poet's perspective into what is initially a third-person description. And while some of Wright's speech-like rhetorical devices might water down a poem, they add vigor to the paragraph forms. The packing together of lyrical sounds--as well as the repetition of words--creates a strong sense of unity in poems like "In Gallipoli...
Though the scene described does not tie in directly or logically to the poem's theme, it connects to the central image of a woman feeding grapes to the poet, through the vaguer evocation of nature--not nature in any specific relation to the characters in the purple scene, but as an overwhelming, quietly underlying force. Because the images are packed close, the connections between the remain deliciously tenuous, tracing, the poet's frame of mind rather than a logical, prosaic thread...
...like the burl on the root of a white oak, and he sang his God Damns in despair." Now you see it, now you' don't--the white oak disappears, and the central character. Old Bud, who does has the potential to run wild and become larger than the poem, twists into another image. In cases like these, the prose poem proves even more confining for Wright than the traditional form; everything must be mentioned once but nearly skipped over for the next idea...
...stone girl" floats in and out of the poem until she becomes a face Wright remembers, while the wind, which one would expect to triumph at the end, fades out like a dream scene. The reverse is central to the poem, and Wright makes it universal simply by allowing it to grow larger than the words. Similarly, in "Wherever Home Is," he allows a statue of Leonardo da Vinci to filter into his mind and emerge uncontrollable on paper. He relishes the flavor of da Vinci's life and the historical impression he is left with: affectionately he calls Leonardo...