disembodied

SHERRY BRENNAN / FROM WINTER POEMS
ecopoetics, volume 2, page 44

Mysteriousness. I read this poem several times – four or five times? Several sections opened to me. The cow whose name shall be called Emmanuel. Driving in the salt/snow/salt effect of winter highways in Pennsylvania. The flocking flocking flocking.

I did not like the appearance of chicken soup in one section. Food is tricky in poetry. You don’t know what associations readers will have. Maybe this is the point.

Mainly I wanted to comment on the use of the word “body.” The word body appears 11 times, 12 if you count bodies. Does the use of the word “body” bring the body into a poem? I had the odd feeling that there was no embodiment here with the use of the word body. I just didn’t feel it. Body does not react to abstraction, it reacts to sensations. The salt, the soup, the red and blue brought more body than body. Now that word looks really funny.