May CommQuote

Hooray for May.  This month's quote goes to poet Vijay Seshadri. The poem is titled New Media and comes from his latest collection 3 Sections.

"Anyone concerned about the state of American poetry should put aside his or her thesis notes and pick up a copy of 3 Sections. . . . Mr.Seshadri is talented and assured enough to lay his self-consciousness bare on the page with a generous, fluid, avuncular wit reminiscent of W.H. Auden." —The American Reader


New Media

Why I wanted to escape experience is nobody's business but my own,
but I always believed I could if I could

put experience into words.
Now I know better.
Now I know words are experience.

"But ah thought kills me that I am not thought"
"2 People Search for YOU"
"In the beginning there was the . . ."
"re: Miss Exotic World"
"I Want Us To Executed Transaction"

It's not the thing,
there is no thing,
there's no thing in itself,
there's nothing but what's said about the thing,
there are no things but words

about the things 
said over and over,
perching, grooming their wings,
on the subject lines.

--from: 3 Sections, by Vijay Seshadri (Graywolf Press, 3013). p20