An exercise I have set myself is reading (every day? who knows) a poem that I haven’t read yet, preferably by a poet that I am not very familiar with.
The latest in the series is Marriage by Marianne Moore. It’s a very long poem — typically I avoid those — and has many quotations in it from works of and conversations with other people. I had not even known of the poem’s existence until I found it towards the end of my current favorite anthology.
Dialogue seems to be the theme and structure of it all. Questions raised in my mind: does theme influence structure? Does structure influence theme? I know that sounds pretentious, but they are what I ask, looking out at the poem while inside the world.
white pebble 