Five Ways

If Nicholson Baker weren’t so sarcastic I might be clear on what he’s trying to say about rhymed poetry in The Anthologist. But he is, and so I’m not. Which leaves me to trust my own instinct, which is still in its infancy, but is informed by this Don Paterson poem, which I was really into—until I realized it rhymed. Now I’m into it a little less.

Why do you stay up so late? (Don Paterson, Poetry, 9/09, p. 412)

I’ll tell you, if you really want to know:

remember that day you lost two years ago

at the rockpool where you sat and played the jeweler

with all those stones you’d stolen from the shore?

Most of them went dark and nothing more,

but sometimes one would blink the secret color

it had locked up somewhere in it stony sleep.

This is how you knew the ones to keep.

—

So I collect the dull things of the day

in which I see some possibility

but which are dead and which have the surprise

I don’t know, and I’ve no pool to help me tell —

So I look at them and look at them until

one thing makes a mirror in my eyes

then I paint it with the tear to make it bright.

This is why I sit up through the night.