On the October Poems

It has been six months since I began the bellumletters. The links continue to disintegrate. Some files have moved, others have expired, a few have been blocked.

There is a type of language -- a set of words and phrases -- in which I feel steeped. It isn't elective. It insulates and swaddles and makes things fuzzy. Writing the hypertext poems is one way I can deal with the fuzziness. It isn't a solution, but a coping mechanism.

In the Bellum Letters I focused on the war. The war continues, and the poems will continue to bob and weave the frayed hem of war reportage. But the hem spreads and webs. There is no edge. There are knots of power, of money and greed. There are traps. It's all connected. This observation is banal, but that's a trap too. There's no justification for the suffering produced by capitalism and war -- by small groups of people who keep getting it wrong. To thess elisions, the October Poems will tether and cleave. And cleave. The faux edges. The dotted lines. The incisions. The invisible stitches. The poem can be a machine of optimism and intention (hopefully).