A journal of contemporary poetry and poetics. Submissions open. Curated by @AndrewCyrilMac1 ISSN 2818-4874
- Tweets972
- Following1.9K
- Followers2.5K
- Likes1.3K
ALT In H.D.’s memoir of Ezra Pound, End to Torment, she mentions an article by Edmund Wilson about T.S. Eliot. Wilson states “that the artist is a kind of prison from which the works of art escape.” To escape from prison requires not just a way out of the cell, but an accumulated understanding of the prison as a whole—the location and schedule of the guards, the sightlines of the watchtowers, its utility infrastructure, its geographical location and the landscape that surrounds it. A prison break is the gradual process of orientation, and, in my view, such is the composition of a poem.
![ii. The lexical poem
If a poem is art made from language (the definition I subscribe to), then “lexical” refers more
specifically to the use of a lexicon or lexical reference as a compositional element. There are
many kinds of lexical poems. I would consider found text, text collage, and erasures related
under this category, since they encounter the extant fine points of a lexicon in the wild, then
employ those examples as art materials. There are also quotation techniques, such as centos,
golden shovels, and “after” poems, which incorporate elements from a given lexicon at the
sentence, phrase and/or word level. In this sense, forms that repeat end words such as the ghazal
or sestina—as well as poems structured around anaphoric repetition at the start of the line—may
be considered lexical exercises, or devices for probing and juxtaposing the dynamic usages of a
word or phrase across contexts.
The linguistic properties of a given lexicon can also provide . . [limit]](https://pbs.twimg.com/media/HK3MbugWkAA9dPy.jpg?name=orig)
ALT ii. The lexical poem If a poem is art made from language (the definition I subscribe to), then “lexical” refers more specifically to the use of a lexicon or lexical reference as a compositional element. There are many kinds of lexical poems. I would consider found text, text collage, and erasures related under this category, since they encounter the extant fine points of a lexicon in the wild, then employ those examples as art materials. There are also quotation techniques, such as centos, golden shovels, and “after” poems, which incorporate elements from a given lexicon at the sentence, phrase and/or word level. In this sense, forms that repeat end words such as the ghazal or sestina—as well as poems structured around anaphoric repetition at the start of the line—may be considered lexical exercises, or devices for probing and juxtaposing the dynamic usages of a word or phrase across contexts. The linguistic properties of a given lexicon can also provide . . [limit]
