La Femme Derelict, Part Two (Syntax as Texture)

I am kind of obsessed with the order we put words in and how received/taken for granted the standard format of the day is. When in reality it seems quite manufactured to me. About five years ago I was enjoying a period of relative calm after some rather intense life experiences and I remember sitting on the floor of my bedroom reading an article in the Denver Quarterly about 'fractal poetry.' And so there I was, looking at sentences versus fragments and I felt there must be a way to show the work involved in either of those arrangements (of the fragment or the sentence, I mean). I think ruptured syntax within a sentence can do that job in such a way that it aids understanding of the intellectual and emotional state of the poem. (For a long time, I admit, I have been allergic to the word 'emotional' because I automatically think of 'overly emotional.' But I am slowly coming around.) Disjunctive to create meaning, as opposed to disjunction questioning the possibility of meaning at all.

So there I was in a period of calm and what I really wanted was to show rupture within that smoothness in language, not just to mirror my own state of internal affairs, but because that is a process that seems to mirror any form of human output. The product (sorry) is calm. It exists in some sort of 'finished' state. Someone has put words in an order and chosen that order. Disrupted syntax seems to call attention to that process of putting in order in a way that adherence to standard grammatical conventions does not. That's where texture comes in. Language as texture not chronology.

Loosening in and out of that disjunctive syntax can also serve as a way to shy away from any one form of grammar as base camp. That way (I hope) the new grammatical conventions don't become mere gimmicks and always serve instead to (again) shape the intellectual / emotional landscape of the poem. To keep the poem curious.