"The Language"
Locate I love you somewhere in teeth and eyes,
bite it, but take care not to hurt,
you want so much so little.
Words say everything.
I love you again, Then what is emptiness for?
To fill, fill.
I heard words and words full of holes, aching.
Speech is a mouth.
It's becoming-- or something that's
not quite so abstract, perhaps.
Let's see.
Oh, here's-- this is playing on words.
What happens we're talking also this evening about the problem
of writing and teaching, or one of the problems
when the issue of being a teacher
begins to encompass you like a new suit, that
has more of a life than you do, you have to watch out.
I think this one came curiously from--
I was theoretically proposed as a teacher
of writing as part of my duties at the University of New
Mexico, and some issue of this is
to try to get some kind of concentration
on the actual character of words as you read them.
I mean, before you get involved with what
you think you're thinking, what actually are you saying?
I remember Duncan, again, it was,
who said, when we were talking about problems
of remedial English, so why don't you
begin with what actually they do right?
And ask them what, in effect, they mean by that?
Instead of saying, well you need a comma here,
or this isn't the right construction,
or this is the wrong tense, why don't you
begin with actually what is in front of you as the "mistake"
and see what that gives you as insight into what
the thinking is.
But this particular poem anyhow has an emphasis
of this kind of fun.
Simply two words-- there is.