Craft Witnessed

Phoebe Wang is a consummate artist in the selections she makes in the construction of a poem's small and large features. Take for example some lines from "Custom Design" as published in a chapbook, Hanging Exhibitions from The Emergency Response Unit.

See what one word changes. "A childhood shared / with a cacophony of brothers and cousins, hungry for half, / a quarter, a sliver of adventure." are the lines in Hanging Exhibitions. The version published in Admission Requirements replaces "cacophony" with "riptide". "A childhood shared / with a riptide of brothers and cousins, hungry for half, / a quarter, a sliver of adventure." The second version pulls whereas the first merely resounds.

The final stanza's "practiced hand" is substituted by "emboldened hand" and the layout of the cascading lines is different — inversed.

as if against a phantom wind until they crawl      foolishly out of closets to obey the commands of the eye, the line and the practiced hand.

as if against a phantom wind until they crawl      foolishly out of closets to obey the commands           of the eye, the line, and the emboldened hand.

I first twigged to Phoebe Wang's gift of precision when I heard her read "The Cartographer" where she evokes the young map maker:

I conjure you drawing in the margins
of your schoolbooks — spice caravans, camels, men made

of embroidery with black pepper beards. […]

The embroidery befits a marginal sketch and the colour of "black pepper" chafes against the cliche of "salt and pepper" and the enjambement not only over line but also over stanza signals implicitly the extent of the marginalia running away down the side of the page and away in imagination.

All because of a careful attention to detail. Important for any conjurer or map maker.

And so for day 1892
17.02.2012