Monday 26 September 2011

Poésie trouvée ... the unsought text

Talking of poems composed from found objects, the following is practically poésie trouvée insofar as the text fell nigh fully formed into my lap unsought ...

The Poetess Attempts to Eulogise
a Wonder of Nature
in a Lightning Storm


A peculiar feature as to a lightning-stroke
is its photographic properties.

In this connection a poetess
of twenty-two years,
while climbing a tree to eulogise a bird in its nest,
was struck by lightning
and afterwards showed upon her breast
a picture of the tree,
with the nest upon one of its branches. 

This theory of lightning-photographs
of neighbouring objects on the skin
has probably arisen
from the resemblance of the burns to natural subjects
due to the ramifications of the blood-vessels
as conductors,
or to peculiar electric movements
which can be demonstrated by
positive charges on powdered moss spores.

After her accident, the poetess
wrote no other verses
since, as she remarked, there
could be no more vital poetry
than that written on her breast.


Catherine Eisner, 'Ambit' magazine, Issue 198, Autumn 2009. 
(The gestation of a poem as a critical plot twist is a subject explored more than once in my fiction.)

For a critical plot twist, see also remarks on Nabokov’s The Gift, here  . ..
http://catherineeisnerfrance.blogspot.co.uk/2017/03/did-someone-call-for-recitation.html

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