It is, of course, hard to say whether this is the same poem as version 1. I say, "of course," not just because every line has been changed but because the original was an improvisation, the starting point the first line, "two words said in conjunction", the second line an act of bravado, "like an inevitable spraying of vigor", the third line ready to concede failure, "lost all hope of underlying success", the fourth line finally stepping away from the set-up and working on the "project". Need I tell you that the sexual shenanigans that follow are purely imaginary?
In making a new version I started with the lines that seemed to me most interesting in an assonance/alliteration/word mash/non-meaning sort of way, "disarming qualities of imprecise / calculation where quantum medication" ... I eliminated "quantum" after I decided it was too faddish a word, like "surreal" used by people when they want to use a fancier word than "weird". But I continue to like "disarming qualities of imprecise calculation"; as the poem's new set up, it declares the forthcoming to be ingratiatingly vague. Then "calculation" turned into "figurement", which isn't in my dictionary (though "disfigurement" is), a word which suggests the figures of numbers & persons (& guesses?) ... whether the very next word redirects one from a possible reading to impossible reading or whether one could continue trying let's just say I recommend not straining but enjoying the way "all whom're comers" rolls about in the mouth and the following rapid fragments of image.
Many words recur from version 1. But version 1 has become less the foundation for the poem (as it asserts itself in version 2) but a box of objects that can be propped in new poses.
I'm made a bit uncomfortable by "fish" in "the indistinct fusion of celebration, / breath, and fish" as I've heard "fish" used derogatorily among gay men to refer to the smell of the vagina. Is the word objectionable in this context?
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