Monday, April 19, 2010

Three Ways to Fall Asleep

1.
Count backwards from
Tomorrow
Until you get to where you
Started.

2.
Write the list of
Everything.
Include: radish leaves, sublimely, and
Without.

3.
You
Are the world's
Mirror. So,
Mirror.

4 comments:

  1. "Include: radish leaves, sublimely, and
    Without."

    lovely.

    the second stanza sold me on the whole thing 10x

    ReplyDelete
  2. I think the first stanza does a great job of introducing us to the abstraction of the poem, preparing us for the delightful specificity of the second. My only qualm is I don't think it works as a way to fall asleep: Thinking about everything you have to do tomorrow is a surefire recipe of anxiety and insomnia. Where as lists that include sublimely do sound sleepy. Actually I don't know about "without," that sounds like something that would keep me up too.

    As for the third stanza, I like it as a sentiment and an imperative and a line, but again: unless your implication is that the world is asleep, I don't get how it relates to the title.

    Basically what I realize I am saying is that I like this and I think it's has great movement and is arrestingly beautiful, but I vehemently disagree with it as advice for falling asleep. Which may be your point.

    ReplyDelete
  3. I don't love the third stanza. I was so taken with the second stanza that I the third seemed like a let down. It wasn't powerful enough to follow number two and act as an ending. That is my thought on the matter.

    ReplyDelete
  4. Am I the only one who has an aversion toward the second stanza? Radish leaves, sublimely, and without are driving me nuts - how are they related? Why these things? Whywhywhy? My reaction was to think that these things were contrived; these feel like the workings of an active mind, not the patterns a mind goes into as it syncs up with the heavy breathing of sleep.

    I have the same question as Dinah on the third stanza.

    I love the first stanza.

    ReplyDelete