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John Bloomberg-Rissman
T to C: Sun
T to C = Travels to Capitals. The capitals are Donald Evans', who created postage stamps of imaginary countries. DE avoided fleshing out his world because he wanted to allow room for his friends’ imaginations. I didn't know him, but I take advantage of that allowance to legitimize my appropriation of his terrain.
If Evans’ world is the “x-axis”, then Michael Palmer’s Sun is the “y-axis”. I'm working my way through Sun poem by poem, using MP's nouns in order as I come to them. For the most part, it’s one MP poem to one poem of mine, or one page of an MP poem to one poem of mine. For my purposes, an MP poem equals an abstract “noun-set”. Occasionally I cheat a bit and skip a noun, but not often, and I try hard not to. Singular nouns can become plural, and vice-versa.
If a poem title includes “upside down”, I take the nouns in reverse order. Twice, bored by the “Palmer axis” I vary the game a bit and allow myself the use of any word in the OED or Webster’s 3rd (including words used in definitions) within five up or down from Palmer’s noun; thus “word” becomes “Worcester”, etc. Sometimes the nouns appear in Martian-radio order. And I can think of a couple poems in which not one Palmer-noun appears at all.
I am not limited to his nouns, I use many of my own, and sometimes wander far afield, but I always return to the MP axis.
I should add that the DE axis is intentionally visible. The MP axis, on the other hand, is much less visible, though it does surface.
There is a narrator; he’s like me, but he isn’t me. There are a number of other characters. Some exist in the world you and I share; some do not. All are equally real.
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