to measure the sweet spot

Poem #300 from a series of poems drawn from the imagination and collected as: a Bachelard reverie.

Back to Bachelard and me – Introduction

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he desired a theodolite

a tacheometer
to measure
and keep up
with shifting ground

surveyor of the heart
estimate
the distance from here
to happiness

is it near

is it far

is the happy space enclosed
like a battle-axe piece
of feeling
lost in a sea
of empty acreage

he wanted
a personal alidade

to figure
all the angles

maybe
the sweet spot for his life
was as close as
just ninety degrees
away

---

© Frank Prem 2018

Bachelard and me Poem #301: for the unsuspecting

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Dear friends and visitors,

The idea that my reading of one man’s work (Gaston Bachelard) could inspire in me such a depth and breadth of creative and imaginative work I find staggering. I have not experienced anything quite like it previously.

To date, I have not finished my reading of Bachelard and his translated works and am still writing poems inspired by provoked contemplation, but I will indulge myself with a few observations.

I began reading Bachelard (On Poetic Imagination and Reverie) in November 2016. Since that time (a smidgen over a year and a half), I have posted 300 poems here on the blog.

A quick count shows that I have some 400+ additional poems written.

I have also assembled 200+ poems in my Seventeen Syllable format, which have not yet seen light of day.

Wow.

It isn’t quite clear to me what direction I should take with this work in the future, nor whether 300 poems is enough to post here and perhaps to post many more risks becoming tedious.

Probably, I’ll carry on posting them because it seems to me that the ideas demand to be read as well as written. We shall see.

In the meantime, thank you to everyone who takes a moment to read these efforts of mine to interpret and translate the work of a very fine French philosopher.

I appreciate you,
Frank