At this workshop today we were asked to write a few lines
Like a poem
About where we’re from.
We wrote “I come from. . .” then continued.
I have written this sort of poem before
Been in other workshops
Other classrooms.
Have I always begun the poem the same way?
Perhaps.
I started, today, with the earth –
The quality of the dirt,
The color, the texture.
In my concrete, brick and steel day to day,
I do not think about the soil – I rarely see it.
But when asked
Where I’m from, I think of where I was planted,
Where I grew from seed to plant.
I think of the earth
I think of the garden I grew in,
Transplanted though I may be.
Hamlet
O all you host of heaven!
Curious construction.
All you host.
Not you hosts
Or O you host.
No no
There is a sense of multitudes in all
And just one in host.
I suppose heaven has the capacity to contain multitudes
In the same way that a house
Can have many mansions
That one can be all
That each of us could be all of us
In calling on all you host of heaven,
Perhaps you cover both one-ness and all-ness,
One, all, everything.
My uncle?
I haven’t seen the text notes on this
But I suspect that this punctuation
Is Editor’s Choice. Which would seem
To make it actor’s choice as well.
I feel sure I’ve seen it as “My uncle.”
Or if not seen, certainly performed, with that period instead of a question mark.
But a question mark has its merits.
The period seems to continue the thought of “my prophetic soul”
It says “I knew it” with a kind of finality.
The question mark could either bring a hint of uncertainty
To this prophetic question or a wave of disbelief.
Or perhaps some editor once
Punctuated it with an exclamation point
That would make assurance double sure
Or even a dash –
My uncle –
Unfinished could indicate the unfinished thought of
“My uncle murdered you.” Or “My uncle is the serpent.” Or
“My uncle is one slimy son of a bitch and I knew it all along.”
But most likely, editors have given this a period. Or a question mark.
But all punctuation is up for questioning I think and perhaps
Worth forgetting for a moment.
O my prophetic soul!
There is absolutely no better way to say “I knew it!”
Deep down
Beyond consciousness
The soul is telling all kinds of prophetic secrets.
Things that couldn’t really be true but of course are.
Of course, we can know all kinds of untrue things too.
I thought I knew exactly the right place to go for grad school.
I knew that if I tried hard enough, I would find a way to live in London.
Both these knowings of my prophetic soul
Were decidedly incorrect and it is the falliability of my knowing
That caused so much damage.
The mistakes were one thing but the sureness around them at the time
Disrupted my entire navigation system.
The lode star of my knowing things proved to be a false guide –
A glimmer out of place, a plane, not a star.
What then to navigate by?
What compass to use?
We can’t really move by the whole sky
Can’t drive the entire map.
We must have something.
Soul.
Star.
Hope.
True or not.
Haste me to know’t, that, with wings as swift As meditation or the thoughts of love, May sweep to my revenge.
Why bring love and meditation into this?
We’re talking about murder and revenge here
Where did the loving meditationing references come from?
Also – what’s so swift about meditation?
It seems to me to be, at its core, a slow process
Nor are thoughts of love
Particularly speedy. One might be struck with them suddenly,
Particularly in a love at first sight situation
But one of the sweetest qualities of love
Is its lack of speed, the way one can sink
Into loving, losing all sense of time,
Where hours can pass in love
Without seeming to have been a minute.
The world slows down with love.
Love slows down the world.
I do not think thoughts of love
Would add speed or wind to an arrow,
It would rather slowly focus it
Til it reached its aim.
Murder?
Did you say murder? We’re five scenes into the play
And Now we discover a murder?
It’s clearly not a murder mystery.
In a mystery, the murder happens quickly
And then we swiftly set about solving it.
We know this isn’t that by its placement in the play and of course, it isn’t.
Because this mystery will be solved in a matter
Of minutes from this first mention of murder.
O God!
It occurs to me that the editors
May have put this exclamation mark here.
Or the printers (I’ll have to check the folio, huh?)
Perhaps it’s a dash –
Perhaps Hamlet is about to swear.
Perhaps there is more.
A sort of “O God, I swear that my love for my father is such – etc”
I’m not sure what that possibility gives us but it occurred to me
Because I can’t think of another instance
In the plays in which a character exclaims this way.
It feels like a very contemporary exclamation –
And an oddly brief and direct response from Hamlet.
It’s also curious that he says this, not after all the terrible descriptions of the hell
That his father has been condemned to, but at the mention of love.
If it’s a gasp, as it’s often played –
It’s interesting that it happens when the focus shifts to fatherly love.
I’m also amused that Hamlet has been quiet all this while
Until a line after he’s been told to “List, list, O list” and then he starts talking.
This happens in classrooms too. As soon as a group of people have been told
To listen carefully, that’s when they start talking.
What?
Did you just say revenge?
I’m sorry, my ear hasn’t quite acclimated to Ghost Speak just yet
And it sounded like you said “revenge” –
Like, I was bound to revenge
But that couldn’t be right,
Could it?
It was stonehenge you said, right?
That’s where the ghosts go home to sleep?
Stonehenge – not revenge
Or Kenge (and Carboys) from the Dicken’s novel, right?
Or – pendge – like, what the cool kids are calling pendulums these days, right?
You didn’t say “revenge.”
I am bound to hear.
I suppose he’s saying he is obligated to hear what his father’s spirit has to say
Because of his filial bonds.
Then, too, there’s the sense of being BOUND to hear something
Simply unable to be missed because it is audible
And happening where he is – the way I’m bound
To hear those guys in the jerseys talking about the game
No matter how much I’d wish to avoid it.
Or perhaps there is a kind of binding
That inevitably knits speaker and hearer
Into a listening connection
As springy as a rubber band
Or a knitted scarf.
I also picture a child bounding across a yard
Toward his father, like a puppy.
There is a bounding toward this story
And a bond
That is about to be sealed.
Speak.
How many times has the word “speak” been spoken so far in this play?
Speak, speak, speak.
I say it enough and it starts to sound funny.
Speak, speak, speak, speak, speak, speak.
Do we say “speak” to each other?
We tell our dogs to speak when we train them.
We use speak to talk about which languages we can commincate in.
Or when we want someone to be louder.
It seems like it’s more associated with formality –
Like, when “I need to speak to you about your job performance.”
Or “We’ve brought in this expert in environmental controls to speak with us.”
The prime usage of speak seems to hang out in our tech – in the speakers
That plug in our ipods, or computers – which is funny, because if there’s one thing a pair of stereo speakers can’t do, it’s speak.
The Hamlet Project 