flâneur

Yellows on the cutting floor. — alina Ştefănescu

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Wherein she attempts to dump a bit of her recent obsession with yellow onto a screen—-for you, whoever you are. To begin with gratitude for other writers, particularly peers in poetry and music, who drew me deeper into this poem last night. To begin with the shape of it— The figure of the poem on the field; the way it occupies space. Four stanzas of different length. Or: three stanzas and an addendum; a trinity with a scrap left on the cutting floor of creation. Or: a quintet, a sestet, a septet, and a monostich. The decision to “grow” each stanza with an additional line is deliberate, and accumulative. I imagine Ruefle tarried a bit in the second stanza, trying to decide where to break for the last line. “For me” settles it, but not cleanly. It draws attention to the “me” in a way I’m not sure the poet intended, which is to say, I can’t know if she meant this. It makes a snapping sound, that break. The title addresses an unknown interlocutor indirectly, speaking to the “tenor” of (his

Wherein she attempts to dump a bit of her recent obsession with yellow onto a screen—-for you, whoever you are. To begin with gratitude for other writers, particularly peers in poetry and music, who drew me deeper into this poem last night. To begin with the shape of it— The figure of the poem on the field; the way it occupies space. Four stanzas of different length. Or: three stanzas and an addendum; a trinity with a scrap left on the cutting floor of creation. Or: a quintet, a sestet, a septet, and a monostich. The decision to “grow” each stanza with an additional line is deliberate, and acc

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