The metanarrative language in all of Byrd’s prose poems veils the sequence of events and characters, yet I am really drawn to the poetry still. Because of the lack of punctuation, disconnected syntax & ideas, and lack of names, I as a reader want to “get” the works more than if the poetry were overt. The lack of usual details creates a desire to read the poetry at multiple angles in order to find a reading. Rather than accept this technique as a reading, I continue to try and “figure out” the poem, though I can see multiple ways in which the techniques work. So in a sense, the framing or metanarrative makes me work twice as hard, but still entertains.
Script Folio 43 Split pomegranate, common rhinoceros beetle, Scarlet Turks='s cap lily folding back it's red lips while anthers circle the pistil's one hand: above them six lines are written in chancery script with lettere tagliate , letters cut like the long lines of pasta our parents cut on our plate, the work of two people who never met. The two halves of each letter--below and above-- are severed or sewn together by inked chain links like those that knot a fence or a stitch that unravels the whole length of a sentence if a stray thread is pulled--chain letter, chain gang, chain mail, chain saw-- or those paper links that wrap themselves around the Xmas tree: eentsy weentsy spider sidling up to each letter, each word, casting and binding in silk as if to ravel and unravel once felt the same. ---------------------------- Food Foods were eaten like the grossness our parents turned into freedom tickets away from the kitchen table, the alteration of rules we didn’t know exis...
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