The Known World
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The Known World by Dan Raphael step out of the known world body of interstices no one hit the wall comes right up hello the way you rise room in so many breaths bread in so many hands half the windows spread their wings today a blanket tomorrow dinner if I don’t gather the water split smoked stirred 4 times a day wandering on the 5th side of the house as a chair from a tree as our legs into music
Remarkable. This poem rests in its space, unknowable, yet knowable for its composed presence–like one’s first encounter with an ee cummings poem, with its seeming non sequiturs and non-parallel constructions, yet a grammar all its own. “No one hit the wall come right up hello” is such a line. But this is what the poem is about: stepping “out of the known world body of interstices.” The world of the poem is a much wider world: “room in so many breaths bread in so many hands;” however, not completely open: “half the windows spread their wings.” I think the next three lines hearken back to the “interstices” of “the known world,” whose “don’t”‘s offer a departure (if I “don’t,” then other choices present themselves) of “wandering on the 5th side of the house”–a new dimension. And then the last four lines draw this out, via creation: mundane, “as a chair from a tree,” and lyrical, “as our legs into music” (from something to sit on to something to dance to), both beautiful.