Steve Timm

Notes for the 7 correlations

1. Form. Practice.
Form is a radio at night, comes & goes. Poetry is a practice goes like this: it comes to (into?) me & I try to be true to whatever comes. At times, as in the case of The Correlations, the process is & was much as Spicer describes it, as I understand that. Part of that is letting it in as it seems to want to be (shape form content (words & spaces)). The Correlations began with a poem about a cat washing herself. I'd never really written (transmitted) stuff like this before (so I knew I was onto-under-something). Then a poem demanded (I can think of no other way to connote the event) to respond to it. Then another poem about the cat then a response. I was in love. The responses (right-side poems) rather oblique in their reference to the left-side poems. This process began recurring I "knew" I was into (under the direct control of) a series & I followed (practiced). Then it ended.

2. Work.
It is always like this when a series works.
Also always, a mea culpa (that shootably clumsy bird). The titles, quite natural at first though obviously in form-their being anagrams-an overt imposition on the work, became a bit of work in the (para)normal sense, requiring conscious though enjoyable effort.

from The Correlations

"Well, so you really are getting poetical."
"No, I'm perfectly serious. It simply makes me frantic."
- Robert Musil, Young Torless

Steve Timm's work has recently appeared or will appear in Aught, Moria, Swirl, Salt Hill, Skanky Possum, and American Letters & Commentary. He teaches English as a second language at the University of Wisconsin in Madison.

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