Ted Greenwald

3

Cuneiform 2008



Here are the bizarre details, page 25, second stanza (of two).

                  Is it Peggy or Sue

                  I think I love you

                  Looking worldlessness

                  Remind me what's your name

Four ideas capture crucial goings-on in one’s pleasant complacency of clichéd language upended, in this case, by the deliberate problematizing of early rock ’n roll iconography, splitting chaste Peggy Sue in two — there is the shameless rhyming of Sue with the next line also ripped from an early r ’n r songbook as is the last line; and there’s the masterfully silly statement that spins our entire cultural orientation on its heels, forcing speculation the unstably-named Peggy, Sue or, in fact, Peggy Sue is not only worldless but stuck in the eerie, pathetic State of The Worldless.

Welcome back.



And if you think page 25 is a lucky pick, turn to page 27, second stanza (of two).

                  Going to make a difference

                  Greens, cooling off

                  Projectile confidence

                  With birdsong

The first line is again boilerplate, a bloated participial (or gerundive) phrase uttered millions of times an hour; the second line, culinary description or acute art speak — either way greens are consonant with the brash birdsong in the fourth line. Once more, that odd Line 3 rips the ‘scene’ open, pitching its payload our way. It’s not always so obvious that the third line re-orders each stanza, but frequently this is what happens, supporting one interpretation of the title 3. More satisfying is Ron Padgett’s idea, blurbing that 3 “takes the mind in at least three different directions simultaneously...”



Another basis for the title is that the collection has three parts. Poems cited above are from “Going Into School That Day,” pieces whose lengths alternate between eight lines on right pages and 14 lines on left pages, and which borrow “words of self-described redemption spoken by the late Salvador Agron,” as Greenwald explains on his copyright page. (Agron was a gang member who killed two teenagers in Hell’s Kitchen.) The two following sections contain pieces of parallel discourse strategy in different formats, “Anyway” with six-line verses, “Dawn On” with poems of 27 lines each. The language in the later sections is as watchful (“Looking”) for the everyday and as defiantly juxtaposed as that in the first section. Here are opening lines to the first poem in “Dawn On.”

                  Dawn on

                  As, iffy

                  Be so kind, looks on

                  The clear light         Friendlies

                  Embody the money, short for

                  Inscribe on to forever                   iris inside clasp

                  Suggestions unhinge putting something on if

                  Embody the body all on about

                  Suggestions unhinge iris inside clasp...

The longer pieces in “Dawn On” allow Greenwald to battle with a sweep of communally mediated ironies, such as “clear light         Friendlies,” and pivotal thought experiments engaging repetitions in language and implosions in meaning as with the shifts in the verbs embody, unhinge. This first poem continues such repetitions, doing it blithely, “bubble,” “happily,” “light,” “live,” and this: “Love most about muse excuse / Come across, bait and switch ... Come across muse excuse..." These experiments are not over and may never get resolved, a State of The Worldless that Greenwald nevertheless kisses if not marries, since it’s all of a projectile, a “fussball bubble / Nod happily feet many language.” The invite is out there, according to Greenwald, “The clear light looks on..."