All Comments on 'Malaysia'

I enjoy reading smithpeter for his use of words. I keep trying to understand an entire smithpeter poem, but I seldom succeed. :(

Most often succeeding stanzas in an SP piece seem like part of an entirely different poem, or at least written by a different person. This poem reads no differently to me. I can follow the first half and I enjoy it, but I fail to see the relationship with the second strophe.

In this poem only the tan of the pants serves as a connection that I can see between the two parts, and I do not feel it enough to join them together. After a brief tan mention the poem wonders off on a totally different tangent and finishes with a flurry of spliced metaphors that do nothing of consequence for the entirety of the work. You can graft different varieties of apples onto an apple rootstock, but you cannot splice apple onto pine and make a living tree.

Fish person,

If I had to write well to eat I would starve. So I write words in lines and place them together, sometimes held with tacks or glue stick just to do it. I am not a big eater these days but I do thirst for seafood, as I hunger for turf.

Now be well in all, you and years new,

sp

eecummings