Differentials: Poetry, Poetics, Pedagogy

thirty. Back to the house at eight. Make some phone calls. Drink some

more. Go to bed. At least that’s the theory. Well, we’re all going to die,

that’s for sure. Like the mouse that hasn’t moved. (20)

On the surface, such passages may look like exercises in self-revelation:
here’s what I’ve done and what it means to me. But Raworth’s “self-centeredness”
works the opposite way. “I’m going on the vague assumption,” he remarks a
few pages later, “that if I can completely and correctly describe my self, then
that self will wither and blow away” (30). But of course that cannot happen:
the “self,” dispersed and dislocated as it may be at any one point, reappears
at the interstices where actual letters received, overheard conversations, and
remembered incidents, collaged together without comment, produce their
own “noise.” At the same time, as we saw in the story of the open-heart op-
eration, the poet’s own experience cannot be represented. His “character” too
must be reconceived as “plot.” Thus, at points of stress, time shifts and prose
often gives way to fragmentary lyric, as when contemplation of the inscrip-
tion on the poet’s yellow pencil—”think and suggest—state of n.j.500“—
is juxtaposed to the notebook version of a poem written on April 1, before
Tom came to Yaddo:

very profound

and almost round

the story of the three verbs

light time and space

their coast

isn’t my coast

*

good evening

I am worn away by your kisses

god i was good

*

that song

that you remember

*

Raworth’s “Letters from Yaddo” 233