help me, william carlos williams, you’re my only hope
On Friday Salome said: “I love Claire. But this whole Why? thing she has going? Totally exhausting.”
It’s Sunday. Claire, Julia and I are heading home from Yerba Buena on the J.
C: I want my pony bag!
Her handbag with a pony in it is clipped to my diaper bag. I unclip it and give it to her.
C: I want the clip!
R: You may not have it.
C: Whyyyy?
R (Oh God, not this again): Because so much depends upon it.
C: Whyyyyyyyy?
R: so much depends
upon
a red wheel
barrow
glazed with rain
water
beside the white
chickens
Pause.
C: What was that?
R: A poem.
C: Poe-wim?
R: Yes. Would you like to hear another one?
C: Yes.
I do Yeats’ Epitaph, Blake’s The Tyger and a little bit of Full Fathom Five, but she is most taken with The Tyger and has to have it repeated 90,000 times. We do a little textual deconstruction, then discuss the nature of poetry and its relationship to memory.
R: … so a good poem can make us remember and feel things.
C: Why?
R: Well, we don’t really know everything about how language and the human brain work together. Maybe when you’re big you could be an English professor or a cognitive psychologist or a neuroscientist, and find things out.
Pause.
C (gravely): I want to find things out.
