Glen Fitch

A word is a wager in thought. Every one I pick is a bet that it will mean to you what it means to me. That is at least today, relevant to my race, class, gender and community. The fine print in my poetic license says I can make up words. I would like to thank the poets of last century for allowing me the right to use profanity. Occasionally in review I have found meanings I did not intend. When in doubt of which word to use, sound trumps meaning every time. When stumped for rhyme, the answer is always more rhyme. Words are magical things and everything is metaphor.

These words are meant to be heard. Reading a play is a poor substitute for the experience of theater. Ideally your first contact with my poems would be via your ears and this text would be a supplement to that experience. Most are sonnets, seventy feet of iambic pentameter in various fourteen-rhyme schemes. Since this text is to be read, I have spliced up many lines. In doing so the reader is encouraged to experience the prose rhythm and not simply read to the rhyme. Each still scans true to the meter. In this way rhymes become echoes and not milestones and pace not halt a poem�s momentum.

It is currently fashionable to omit punctuation. This is unfortunate in my opinion. Written punctuation is about logic. A sentence is a complete thought. Period. Yet when read aloud it tells the reader to give a full stop. Likewise, use a dash today and no one raises an eyebrow, but use a set of parentheses and the editorial police show up. Somehow this has come to be a signal for the inappropriate as in slang and jargon or a trivial, intrusive insert. For me the use of the parentheses is a cue for breathing and speaking. It notes an aside and a lowering of the voice, as in statements the speaker may be making to himself. One can use quotes for the improper or comas for an inserted clause, but as those are more commonly used for speakers and pauses, the parentheses make more sense for an aside.

I have written these with a grand tradition in mind. Not just in the verse forms, but in genres and conventions. What some might dismiss as a clich� might be a custom thoughtfully fulfilled. Likewise one can re-turn an old turn of phrase and my license allows me to pun at will. Since the play in word-play derives from being understood in more than one way, perhaps a second look might offer additional rewards.

Many of these poems are in the lyrical tradition. The reader or hearer is encouraged to assume the poet, himself, is the speaker in the poem. You will see the pronoun �I� often. Even so, the �you� I have had to tell friends, �is not YOU and rarely the I, Glen.� I would like the reader not have to know about me personally to enjoy them. I do not live a life of commentary with my poems as allegories of it and my personal mythology would be a rather boring narrative to gloss. I hope each reader will feel as if he or she is actually writing that poem. I am not aiming for the greeting card jingle, but for the universal in human experience.

I hope you are pleased by the works enclosed. Some lines were an ordeal and other lines popped full grown out of my head. I intend never to explain, as I would be merely speaking as a critic and a very partial one at that. I lay claim to the labor but the results seem far beyond me. For me writing is like rubbing a foil wrapped coin till the head or tail appears. I believe in the Muse.

my interests... Vivaldi, flannel, Proust, Turner, candied ginger, "Chinatown," Iris Murdoch, David Grisman, the sound of rain, Anthony Trollope, Ecco shoes, stracciatelli, "What's Up, Doc?" the sound of courdory, Roger & Gallet, Cavafy, dawn, lilac, lemonchello, Roberston Davies, the Isle of Torcello-Venice, "Rustler's Rhapsody" Keats, Earl Grey Tea, Genet, Autumn, waves at night...


Please visit my blogs @ http://blog.myspace.com/85297857 or http://glenfitch.blogspot.com/

and view my you-tube video @ http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R1PHU8NaOD8

hear me @ http://www.poetryvisualized.com/media/1959/GROOMING/