… We’ll have sex if you love me. Or: We’ve had sex; how can you not love me? Or: We love each other; let’s marry so we can close the deal in bed. Or: My self-respect is so down; I can’t risk having sex and then your pulling out.
My verse failed insofar as it tried to “express” me and my personal history. The advice: “Get more emotion!” was non-productive or even obstructive, maybe because of the false way I understood and tried to implement it. It caused me to delve into the past and try to
locate things I could feel strongly about; then to try to construct poems around those feelings. I was dead to the past.
Sontag’s emphasis on form as content, source of emotional power, seems more pertinent. *Essay on Bresson.*
(Copyright 2018 James Mansfield Nichols. All rights reserved.)

Written in the 70s, 70s-7a. (Copyright 2018 James Mansfield Nichols. All rights reserved.)


The Carper
“Eldest Trump sons jet to Dubai for lavish wedding” (CNN, 4-13-18).
The plural “sons” is off. “Eldest” is superlative — there can only be one. “Older Trump sons…” would have been better to distinguish the grown two from their half-sibling teen. And is “lavish” necessary? Since when do rich people jet around the globe to any wedding that’s not lavish? Res ipsa loquitur.
“NASA Captured 3D Scans of Jupiter’s Cyclones And They’re Terrifyingly Awesome” (The Daily Caller, 4-14-18).
Frighteningly scary is how “awesome” has lost its “awe” part and has to be punched up with an adverb.