Same Difference

by Mike

comments by:

   

in the imitative phase a grab
bag effect ensues       .       likewise
the rhetoric & rituals                                                         

of same -- a pizza box and/or
trouser cuffs come hither quality
adheres to objects

bells & whistles
flavor crystals
thorns & thistles

themselves acquisitive little elfin occasions
of one sort or another

try them in your back pockets for godsake, next
to the cross-stitching
                        next to
the h-e-double-hockeysticks, the
I'm-rubber-and-you're-glue of
pre-prophylactic signification

if squirrels store things                                                      
this way then that's what
you are today, you little muffin!

even your melted footprints have been
hoarded, I'm guessing, Mr. Bag-of-tricks!

the snake that crept, the snake that slipped,
the one that slept & walked the equivalent
anthropomorphic lakeside strut, is your wet
whistle, darling, "same difference," as uncle

used to say

when we're under water
when we're in the sky
when we're six feet under
ewes look just like eyes

is that the hook?                                                              

are we a cover
group?  is that your pain
in my foot?  impossible you say to
which
        sentence is
                        the step-
sentence: the imagined
orphan is of some position
in the community.

we're through
to gather
in the corners

the perf'd periphery envisioned
as love, the
                imbibing eye imbibed

one's weight soaking wet
in tight-fit permeating permeables                                             
the standard issue, measure

the singular valence as polyvalent in time

a rhythm tongued and
tonguing, taste buds in
the mouth where
they belong while elsewhere

how do you figure
                        between/be twin
the diary queen's lost
pencil fumbled over the goal
line, no

metaphor but a
littoral drowning
and grass-
roots rescue

Accourding to Kirsten Thorpe:

From: thorpe@sas.upenn.edu (Kirsten L Thorpe)
Date: Thu, 8 Jul 1999 15:12:12 -0400 (EDT)

Mike, sometimes i read your poems, and just listen to the way they ring
and bounce...but i was trying to get a feel for what you may or may
not be actually saying in this one..so, just a couple comments as i read
along for the third time...

Michael Magee wrote: >
> Hi there, thought I might pass along this long-ish new poem of mine - a
> riff on the liminal and collaborative nature of selfhood across time.
> Hope you like it and please give impressions if the spirit moves you.        
>
> -m.
>
>
> SAME DIFFERENCE
>
> in the imitative phase a grab
> bag effect ensues     .       likewise
> the rhetoric & rituals
>
> of same -- a pizza box and/or
> trouser cuffs come hither quality
> adheres to objects
>
> bells & whistles
> flavor crystals
> thorns & thistles
>
> themselves acquisitive little elfin occasions
> of one sort or another
>                                                                              

> try them in your back pockets for godsake, next
> to the cross-stitching
>                       next to
> the h-e-double-hockeysticks, the
> I'm-rubber-and-you're-glue of
> pre-prophylactic signification
>
> if squirrels store things
> this way then that's what
> you are today, you little muffin!
>
> even your melted footprints have been
> hoarded, I'm guessing, Mr. Bag-of-tricks!
>

grab bag. collaborative nature of self-hood across time. cool pics. i
think it's pretty clear up till here, even without your preface. it seems
like you're taking that ring and bounce and setting the objects of the
collaboration to it...                                                         

> the snake that crept, the snake that slipped,
> the one that slept & walked the equivalent
> anthropomorphic lakeside strut, is your wet
> whistle, darling, "same difference," as uncle
>
> used to say
>
> when we're under water
> when we're in the sky
> when we're six feet under
> ewes look just like eyes
>
> is that the hook?
>

...then, here, _is_ that the hook? (and the title) are the contents of the
collaboration irrelevant? or are you just talking a more common step-up
level, whereby things will come out the same? i don't know if i even want      
an answer, this part just makes me really think about it.

but, now it loses me some, i must say...

> are we a cover
> group?  is that your pain
> in my foot?  impossible you say to
> which
>       sentence is
>                       the step-
> sentence: the imagined
> orphan is of some position
> in the community.

i like this idea an aweful lot, the step-sentence, but i'm having trouble
fitting a lot of this section in.

>
> we're through
> to gather                                                                    
> in the corners
>
> the perf'd periphery envisioned
> as love, the
>               imbibing eye imbibed
>
> one's weight soaking wet
> in tight-fit permeating permeables
> the standard issue, measure
>
> the singular valence as polyvalent in time
>
> a rhythm tongued and
> tonguing, taste buds in
> the mouth where
> they belong while elsewhere
>
> how do you figure
>                       between/be twin
> the diary queen's lost
> pencil fumbled over the goal                                                 
> line, no
>
> metaphor but a
> littoral drowning
> and grass-
> roots rescue
>

i think it might have just gotten a little too language play at the
end, which is always fun, and may be what you want, but i definitely lost
the focus on a semantic level, dig?

just my most straight up comments from the simple mind,

hope all is well in r.i.,

k.

Accourding to Mike Magee:

From: mmagee@dept.english.upenn.edu (Michael Magee)
Date: Thu, 8 Jul 1999 15:33:36 -0400 (EDT)

Kirsten, thanks for the comments! - I appreciate the honest reactions,
including, or perhaps especially, the I-don't-get-its, which help me
identify where I'm losing ideal readers like you -- of course "losing"
might be the wrong word since here we are discussing it, right?  Which is
to say, sometimes when I stray "north of meaning" (as someone recently put
it to me) its intended in the hope that the reader will conspire to pick
up the various strands and make of it what might be made, hopefully a lot.
You've interestingly separarted the poem into four sections -- which
happens to be true to the actual composition: the sections you marked
were written at four different times.  I tried to pick up the strain in        
some intuitive, rather than narrative sense -- what James Tate calls "deep
character" but what I would rather envision as a polyvocal continuum.  In
the last section there are certainly things one might hang one's hat on:
the foregrounding of the body, the physical, one might say the sexual; or,
the connections conceptually between "corners," "periphery,"
"littoral"-ness "between"-ness.  There are obscure references, fairly
private, such as "tight-fit" which is a reference to the
poem-as-tight-jeans in O'Hara's "Personism: A Manifesto," and the "grass-
/ roots rescue" which is in part a whimsical play on "rescue grass" a type
of grass which grows in the tropical Americas.  So, there you have it -
when I'm in my poems I don't really know what they mean -- I have to
become a reader of them after the fact, and then I'm just one reader of
many (hopefully!).  Thansk again for the honest and interesting response!

-m.