Entry 375 — An Infraverbal Poem for bp
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Note: this poem happened into my head while I was thinking about the alphabet, specifically about the fact that it seemed to me to qualify as a word (one meaning “letters in order”). Hence, Aram Saroyan’s four-legged m, as a fragment of the alphabet (m combined with n), is a word-fragment, and thus verbal enough to qualify, by my criteria, as a visual poem.
After that, my over-active mind thought again about Geof Huth’s stipulation that a pwoermd (like Saroyan’s) could not have a title, one of many things I’ve long argued with him about. First thought: all poems have titles, it’s just that some have explicit one, some implicit–usually its first line. So there’s actually no such thing as a one-word poem. However, in favor of Geof’s stipulation is the fact that some poems considered one-word poems that have explicit titles would not work without their titles and are therefore not truly one-word poems. For instance, the following:
Is It Possible To Write A One-Letter Poem?
i.
“i” without its title would not be a poem. But what about my poem for bp? I would claim that it consists only of one word, although that would is a fusion of two, “yes” and the alphabet, and–because its title is without effect on its content but only serves to identify it (and add background as a date might)–it is as much a pwoermd as any without an explicit title is.