Timing

"I’m going to set my timer. It's not rhyming words at the end of a line. It's not form. It's not structure. It's not loneliness. It's not location. It's not the sky. It's not love. It's not the color. It's not the feeling. It's not the meter. It's not the place. It's not the intention. It's not the desire. It's not the weather. It's not the hope. It's not the subject matter. It's not the death. It's not the birth. It's not the trees. It's not the words. It's not the things between the words. It's not the meter.

(timer beeping)

It's the timing."

—Charles Bernstein's 60-second lecture on "What Makes a Poem?"

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GE— Timing is the comedian's property, his element. Timing is everything, else the punchline is wasted, the joke, the whole life of the hours of preparation flows out of your hands. Perhaps for the "new" poet as well, this is the case? Timing might mean you sing when relevant the relevant song.

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AN— Mean Time, don't be so thrifty, so cruel

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AN— haha, well you did make it in time anyway

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AN— Time asks: Is there more to be sad? We answer: In tune.

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AN— the motions. the hesitations where we reveal ourselves best as nothing.

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AN— Dance operations.

GE— the tiny motions of the every day mind, tiny notions of the every day hand. / we dance best when we don't know it, the earth spins beneath so we seem to be moving. / seem: to whom? and why?

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AN— yes, those syllables are drumming =)

GE— the hay came to pay its respects to a dead horse. / the dog said the horse died of hunger. / the hay cried itself into a forest, choking the dog.

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AN— precipitate, also. then rain. sink to the occasion.

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GE— Bow before audience so you don't have to look it in the face when you're laughing.

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AN— except the outside shattered like so seem so inside, somehow

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AN— Readiness yes. Enough patience to hold your tongue. Come the moment: speak!

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DE— Touch the moment and moment flies away. Do not touch the moment and your hand flies away.

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AN— useful directions (also) for rowing a boat, sitting up or down a tree. Would make for an interesting shower.

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AN— reColding | deColding

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AN— no breath to waste!

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GE— Remember Orpheus. Who, in song, had perfect timing, had the Furies crying, drenching their wretched hair with tears. But come the last moment of patience, when he was moments away from freeing his Eurydice, his doubts overtook him, he turned (a moment too soon!) and lost his meaning forever.

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AN— your eurydice reminds me of kafka (coming from Dickinson's alternative house of "Prose," hope you won't mind): "There are two cardinal sins from which all the others derive: impatience and laziness. It was because of impatience that they were expelled from Paradise, it is because of laziness that they do not return. Yet perhaps there is only one sin: impatience. Because of impatience they were expelled, because of impatience they do not return."

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AN— patience was not asking for one more day yesterday

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AN— a haste of lime

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AN— let's stalk in staccato, yes!

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DE— In Time, a classic revenge is being taken upon France.

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AN— laissez le bon temps rouler, louisiana! france has left the building

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DE— Superfluous time. Withered characters of the capital. There is only one——what?——moment to lose.

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DE— Diamond is only so much coal that had to endure and wait and hide until it has forgotten what black ever meant. I can see glitters in the soot...

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DE— The hour the clock skipped and never remembered

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