The poem dictates the poem

I’ve been working on my latest project, Pythia Says, for more than a year now. Perhaps the most surprising thing is that there isn’t more of it. I’ve been writing it in fits and starts — several weeks or a month or two of activity followed by a longer stretch of nothing.

I don’t even know how to describe it — I don’t like calling it “stream of consciousness” as there is quite a bit of conscious action. And it isn’t “found” poetry, except for the Prologue (which is a flarfian bit of Google-generated sentences), although many phrases have been borrowed or appropriated. Instead, the words, phrases, sentences build upon each other, metonymically. Words, sounds, letter formations connect to others; images connect to images; the poem dictates the poem. It forms itself, grows organically, displays its crystalline scaffolding. (I am reminded of Rosemary Waldrop’s essay “Chinese Windmills Turn Horizontally.”)

If anything, it could perhaps be described as “channeled.” I do open myself up in a way to receive the poem, to let the connections tease and trace. And I have a couple touchstone images — visions of “Pythia” — a psychic in a bathtub, a priestess at the edge of an abyss, an old radio picking up distant frequencies.