WEBVTT

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Sometimes, I play games and
make poems out of those games.

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So what I don't know
quite what to do,

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I look around to invent
a game in order to write.

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On this occasion, on my coffee
table in the living room

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was an edition of Mrs
Dalloway by Virginia Woolf.

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And I thought, well, it
might be interesting to write

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a poem based on words that I
would find in Mrs Dalloway.

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And so I tried it.

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And sometimes, I
would go several pages

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before finding the next
word, and in that way,

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both use the novel as a
watermark behind the poem

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but wrote a poem
of my own thinking

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out of what Virginia
Woolf had done.

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So when I was finished, and it
still wasn't time for lunch,

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I thought, well, now what?

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And I thought, well,
maybe do that again.

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So I looked, and the
book was 300 pages.

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And this first poem
had taken 50 pages.

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So I thought, well,
if I keep doing this,

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I would have six poems,
and that would represent

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the whole of the novel.

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And that would also
be a constraint.

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So the poem would
have to end, and I

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would have to always
anticipate making the poem end

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and resolving it in some
way before I got to page 50.

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So I'm going to read
two of those poems.

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And the first one represents
the pages 200 to 250.

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It's called "Opened and Shut."

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"She had prepared a looking
glass, hair, dress, thought,

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sofa, in the glow of dog's
barking, beautifully close-up

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and once flames eating
the edge of the sofa.

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Her eyelashes blurred.

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Chin, nose, forehead,
some lips, the cheek,

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the glass looking first
at one thing than another.

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Nose, eyes, evening.

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She sat looking at the map
of her hands, the window,

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the clock, her pulse.

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The body was busy
thinking, conjuring

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the museum of a moment,
emotion, scenes, people,

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bags of treasures,
heaps of theories.

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Theories to explain feeling 'the
here' and the back of the hand.

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A theory allowed one
thing after another.

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First dinner, then mourning.

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Her hand was the world.

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To get to it, she had
to look at herself.

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To get at the truth,
one would have

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to disregard anything false.

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Yet, the truth was intangible.

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One eye on the horizon, a
long indeterminable mere

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straightness, a few plants,
that indescribable purple,

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doors being opened,
visual impressions,

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as if the eye were the brain.

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The body entering the house."

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