Anamnesis A Poem

Anamnesis is a book-length poem that incorporates the process of revision into its progression. Beginning with the statement, We can write, the poem explores the possibility of poetic narrative as constructed from statements linked not to forward-tending narration, but rather dedicated to the eventual substitution, reformation, or even crossing out of earlier lines. In Anamnesis, the forward movement of writing or telling is accomplished only by correction, in other words, by return. If such corrections finally become demonstrative in their own right, it is because the accrual of fragments forms a kind of narrative of the authors life:I am ten years old and my fathers face turns inside its hat and collarAcross a ski slopeThe trees are black in snowIt muffles everythingCross this outWrite, I jumped off a wall when I was sixWrite, I fell on the blade of an ice skateCross this outI was nineDriven by doubt in the effectiveness of linguistic description as we normally know it, Anamnesis is a poem about recollectionthough it is also concerned with the Platonic origin of the title word and with the possibility of knowledge that may inhere even in a state of unknowing.