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19 July 2005:
One of these days, with his permission, I hope to make up to RK for my inelegant job by doing an electronic edition--in color, as with the sample below, if that works for him.
These fulcrum poems of Richard's are more clever than I at first took them to be, for they all consist of three rather than just two words (except for the few with more than three words). Each contains a fulcrum, or group of one or more letters that the first word in the pwoermd ends with, and the second begins with. The third word contributing to the pwoermd is the full word. When I first looked at these, I hurried through them, and thought they were simple word-within-word poems. Hence, I read the one above as "dozen" with "zen" in it. Richard set me straight, though it took him more than one post to do so, I was so deep in my duh zone.
The author tells me his favorites are "CROSSORDS" and "SOLD."
As I told him, I have quite a few favorites, and my opinion keeps shifting. I like his two--plus "DOZEN," "FUCKING," "CLEARLY" (in spite of two of its words being too similar, "clear" and "clearly"--because, for one thing, I prefer when the two small words in a fulcrum word are pronounced differently--as clear and ur-ly). "CHARIOT" is maybe the most sensually rich. "FUCKING" is viscerally rich. "DOZEN" ideationally rich. I like "JEWISH," but couldn't mate it with any other word. (I tried to have each pair of facing words in the book to play off the other.) "JEWISH" is a tough word because of all the socio-political blather stuck to it. "MALL" I almost tossed because I don't consider "Ma" a proper word--but the idea/image of the mall as a mother/all greatly appeals to me.
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