Hugh Nicoll's Blog

patterns, poetics, polytexts

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Stephen Vincent’s “Tenderly #6 or The Gertrude Improvs”

March 13th, 2006 · No Comments

Stephen Vincent published Tenderly #6 or The Gertrude Improvs on March 8. Its mysterious music captured my attention almost immediately, and I’ve gone back to his blog on daily basis to re-read. I could of course copy and paste the text of the whole poem onto my computer and re-read at my private leisure, but I’m enjoying the virtual visiting, as if I were in the room and could hear the poet reading his own evolving text. It helps, of course, that I’ve had the pleasure of meeting Stephen, and seeing his way of interacting with others, in addition to the pleasures and challenges of his texts and photographs.

Here, in “Tenderly #6” — and I’m still struggling to understand how this poem works — alliteration, enjambment, and the syncopation of the text achieve a unity that is as fascinating in its precise constraints as the soaring meditation on language, politics, and history through [a sort of] window on Cheney’s quail shooting incident.

Great stuff!

Tags: poetics

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