G is for Glose
A glose starts with a texte and comments on it through expanded discussion. In other words, it takes the texte, which may be a stanza of any number of lines and then creates a stanza for each of those lines.
“A last attempt: the language is a dialect called metaphor.
These images go unglossed: hair, glacier, flashlight.
When I think of a landscape I am thinking of a time.
When I talk of taking a trip I mean forever.
I could say: those mountains have a meaning
but further than that I could not say.”
-A Valediction Forbidding Mourning, Adrienne Rich
A last attempt: the language is a dialect called metaphor.
We’ve attempted to meet in our own native tongues,
And a few we speak conversationally.
Already, we have nothing in common.
We’ve found a rather unfamiliar patois
In which we attempt to create meaning.
Analogy makes clarity illusory.
These images go unglossed: hair, glacier, flashlight.
Occassionally, you cannot escape reality.
Some meanings cannot mount the language barrier,
Falling off the wall like wounded soldiers,
I on east, you on west, attempt to dismantle
Cross, or get below the apartheid of understanding.
I go over, you go under, we find ourselves on opposite sides, still lonely.
“When I think of a landscape I am thinking of a time,”
I attempt to explain. “Like ancient egypt? Pyramids?” You ask,
Never getting it. The literal is like a drug
To which you are, of course, addicted. You crave simplicity,
I offer you a symbol (subtle methodone).
“Perhaps behind this door we’ve tried, there is nothing.”
When I talk of taking a trip I mean forever.
I could say this in my own tongue, but it would be meaningless.
I could say this in our shared tongue.
It would be meaningless.
I could say: these mountains have a meaning.
You would say: excuse me?
I would try to explain myself,
But further than that I could not say.
I admit, “I do not have the language.”
I do not say that you don’t either.