Thermometer Metrics

It’s been animated by Kat Burns.
http://souvankham-thammavongsa.com/thermometer.html

What I miss in viewing the animation is the columnar display of the poem on the page.

Thermometer, A Diagram of

The human body
is marked

between
two points

The point
water boils

The point
water freezes

This
is where

it lives
and how

Somewhere
between two points

Who & Where: Souvankham Thammavongsa. Residual (2006, Greenboathouse Books, Victoria, B.C.)

What I admire in this poem is the restraint and the ghosting of “where”. See the two points. These stanzas omit the expected “where”: The point/ water freezes. Its omission here gives added strength to its appearance later: This / is where. It’s an effect trained by attentive staring at a thermometer and the meniscus of the mercury. And how.

And so for day 1461
13.12.2010