There are lots of questionmarks in these lines, as befits my ignorance. A friend of profoundly poetic tenor pointed out to me the other day that I also enjoy employing negative statements that imply or outline a positive poetic feeling. If I were to have written Hamlet, for instance,
To be or not to be, that is the question.
Might have sounded something like this instead:
Not to be or not not to be, is that the question?
In the poems that follow there is much that is doubted, and many an assertion will not come unattended by its qualifier. After all, what king would step forward into such august company as you yourself provide without his page? Good my page, let us go forth like Wenceslas and provide for our poor and hungry souls the wine and meat of poetry, cibum et vinum . Notwithstanding all the misfires and queries contained in here, I know with severe certainty, as if gripped by a divine hand of lightning, that the feeling is true.
I will not wait for some un-looked-for good to come, but will make my present its own sufficing memory.
Gregg G. Brown
Jan 1, 2005
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