I’ve long been fascinated by the inner workings of English in very short segments. Typographical errors, for instance, when they seem to release some other possibilities. Aram Saroyan’s Lighght would be a prime example, presented as a poem in its entirety.
We accept the silent “gh” without question in conventional writing, but a second one brings us back to the perplexity we had as children learning some very strange spellings. And then, maybe, it points to the wonder of light itself.
There’s also the question of just how short a poem can be. One word? Two? A single line? Two lines?
Beyond that is the concrete poem, including those where typography itself seems to embody its own beauty, apart from any obvious meaning.
More recently, I’ve become fond of two or three synonyms or antonyms in juxtaposition.
I’ve played with all of these concepts, some of the results now appearing in my Thistle Finch chapbooks and others in my Kinisi series here.
And some of them could simply be prompts for a writing exercise.
Trying to figure out what to call them has always been a challenge. I wound up with Kinisi, from the Greek root for kinetic, when I noticed what attracted me to these fragments was some mysterious innate motion generated by the bits.
Here’s hoping they leap and dance in your imagination, too.
Jnana's Red Barn 