Sign Inventory Week 7

"Riprap"

Gary Snyder

Lay down these words
Before your mind like rocks
                  placed solid, by hands.
In choice of place, set
Before the body of the mind
                  in space and time:
Solidity of bark, leaf, or wall
                  riprap of things:
Cobble of milky way,
                 straying planets,
These poems, people,
               lost ponies with
Dragging saddles--
                and rocky sure-foot trails.
The worlds like an endless
                four-dimensional
Game of Go.
                ants and pebbles
In the thin loam, each rock a word
                 A creek-washed stone
Granite: ingrained
              with torment of fire and weight
Crystal and sediment linked hot
                    all change, in thoughts,
As well as things.



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Sign Inventory

* The poem consistently connects "things" from the physical world with abstract "thoughts" (ex. "Lay down these words / before your mind like rocks" " These poems, people, / lost ponies with Draggin saddles--" "Crystal and sediment linked hot / all change, in thoughts, As well as things."

* The poem also seems very concerned with both the Earth and... "not" Earth---perhaps "metaphysical"?  ex. "In choice of place, set before the body of the mind / in space and time: solidity of bark, leaf, or wall" "the worlds like an endless / four-dimensional game of Go." " Granite ingrained with torment of fire and weight."

*I noticed that the poem also avoids using gerund verbs. Strange in a poem already so concerned with "bridging" the physical and meta-physical.

*the poem also seems constructed around the employment of short, stark, monosyllabic words. ex. "rocky sure-foot trails" "solidity of bark, leaf, or wall" "each rock a word"