I've been thinking quite a bit about Geof Huth's 365 Ltrs project. It is, to my mind, an unusually audacious and raggedly beautiful undertaking. The premise is simple: to write a letter in the form of a poem, every day for a year, each poem being addressed to a diffferent individual. The poems are so far primarily addressed to poets, family, artists, colleagues and friends.
What's emerging is a layered monologue which I find incredibly moving. It's instance after instance of address, but it is also a kind of ongoing diary, an extraordinary record of one man's will to create. It is not a small undertaking. These are daily poems which wax on. If he continues at his present pace he will have a manuscript of over one thousand pages when all is said and done. This is good stuff worth paying attention to.
Thanks, Tom. Hadn't yet read this when I'd sent that note out to you earlier. Richard Lopez is today's victim (I mean recipient).
ReplyDeleteGeof
"an unusually audacious and raggedly beautiful undertaking" -- exactly. And, which is something that I have to get around to writing about, there is also something remarkable about being the "victim (I mean, recipient)" of the 'ploettmer'. And receiving the actually paper document in the mail furthers this feeling. I can't remember the last time I received a personal letter in the mail and certainly, never a poem addressed to me. It is a arrestingly intimate / public communication, an intriguing hybrid between direct unartifice-ful communication and highly deliberate aesthetic communication, an engaging hybrid between the spontaneous and the markedly constrained and planned.
ReplyDeleteGary,
ReplyDeleteI agree.