as is the case in Gomringer’s constellation, but transforms into “mind” by a
simple reversal of w to m. What a difference a letter makes! In #7 a second
transposition transforms “wind” into “wing,” while the separation of “in”
from the four-letter words suggests that the bird’s wing ®ies in the wind, even
as it is recalled “in” the “mind” of the previous lyric. In the ninth lyric, the
two-word “world / wind,” this motif is repeated, the expected whirlwind
now seen as universal, as indigenous to the earth (poem #1) and hence the
“world.”
The magic of letter reversal has always fascinated Johnson. Asked to com-
ment on the concrete poem “M A ZE, M A NE, WA NE,” [see Solt, Concrete Po-
etry 251), the poet writes:
It is a maze mostly because one tends to read left to right at ¤rst &
it makes no sense.
Then one sees the vertical words: MAZE, MANE, WANE & thinks,
trapped as I planned, to it that way. But the way out of the maze is a
visual one & one sees at last that it is simply three words MAZE (since
the M’s & W’s are made exactly alike, as are the Z & N’s, so that the W
is simply an upside down M, etc.). So it is actually the word maze mak-
ing itself into one. And as an added delight, there are the handsome
words M A ZE, M A NE, WA NE. (Concrete Poetry 52, 311)A similar form of verbal play characterizes the eighth Song of the Earth:
W A N E
a n e w
W A N E
a n e w
a n e w
W A N E
a n e w
W A N EA N E W
A N E W
A N E W
A N E WHere the ¤rst letter w of “wane” becomes the last letter of its anagram “anew.”
And further, w is an upside-down m, the letter preceding n, and hence made
new by it. Throughout the ¤rst part of the poem, the capitalized “WANE”
Johnson’s Verbivocovisuals 201