A great deal of the pleasure of this poem stems from its layout of cascading words — adjectives all aswirl.
In response to your ad: self-starting mature reliable appealing progressive dependable agressive organized personable ambitious experienced and bondable individual
with own tools[ … ]
On the other hand
a minute ago
the south-west wind
(which is the warm tongue of the world)
licked my face and leaned against me
like a great old scruffy beautiful mutt [ … ]
and I became
immature unreliable regressive disorganized innocent impious self-unstarting grubby and ecstatic as if
I already have a job.
It is only in transcribing the poem that I noticed that the animal wind is laid out in a cascade similar to all the adjectives describing the various states of the speaker. And now I hear an echo of Shelley’s Ode to the West Wind “O Wild West Wind, thou breath of Autumn’s being / Thou from whose unseen presence the leaves dead / Are driven like ghosts from an enchanter fleeing” — a breath of revivification.
O yeah, that poet, gainfully employed or otherwise, is George Miller and his poem still doing work years later is “Explicitizer at Liberty” collected in Sancho (Wolsak and Wynn, 1987).
And so for day 1687
27.07.2011