agonies and fears lest he fail to produce the right poem. The underlying voice
resorts to prose to fathom the transitional phase from agony to birth.
Is your breathing calmer now? Maybe you can still write. Since you
were twenty you often felt in danger when you started a poem? But
once you finish the first stanza you feel a power inside you, its origins
unknown to you: like a spring from hidden sources. You only feel the
muffled gush. It must be your belief then, I mean you L‘Akhdar Ben
Youssef, it must be your belief that you are now among the lost.
(Ibid.)The poem attests to Bakhtin’s reservations against poetic consciousnesses as
unitary, for the resort to prose signifies a search for another representational
medium. The poem evolves as a depiction of a condition, for it records the
moment as a combinational site between the temporal and the spatial. Poetry
makes no claims to inspiration, as the creative impulse collects its material from
the real, but it produces a poem through a strenuous effort that involves not only
recollection, but also knowledge and actual experience. The artifact records every
detail; including the poet’s own thoughts and the movements of the hotel maid.
Do Not Turn Your Jacket Over Even If It Gets Worn
A girl enters
the used-clothes
store.
She’s thin.
Her eyes widen
the way a skirt widens in the wind,
and widen
to stare at her lover’s jacket,
his red/black jacket
and its missing buttons.He may have used a new meter here, or a no-meter. The issue is not
important. When L‘Akhdar Ben Youssef is withdrawn from the
world he loses his bearings. This is why his wing remains tied to a
string dragging on the face of the earth.Search for Your Defeated Ring in Your Victorious Country
No victor at Night’s end, and no defeated.
Each struggles with his stumbling.
Each regrets his stupor.
Each walks to his own slaughterhouse foolish as a bee.
Search for your defeated ring in your victorious country.
That lost star...POETIC DIALOGIZATION