"What's with that?"

In response to someone's comment on the post/poem You Gather Your Friends, yeah, you're right.

It wasn't just someone, it was a long-time reader, Al Arntsen. He wrote:

"You know this poem is part of another poem (Changes 16). What's with that?

Al"

Hi Al:

Yeah. That's a good point. Actually the short poem came first, although I published it here later. When I was writing Changes 16, it seemed to fit for the last stanzas. But since I included those lines in the longer poem, Changes 16. . .does that mean I plagiarized myself? Or should I have unpublished the original poem, now that it's lines were all included in the later poem? I don't know! But thinking about it, I realized it probably doesn't matter, does it?

The answer to your question, Al, came to me just now. At a concert, Neil Young once responded to a someone who kept yelling for a tune "It's all one song." And so it is with this poetry. It's all one poem--as good and bad, as fragmented and jagged and inwardly-referential as The Cantos (OK, saying it is as good as The Cantos is a bald-faced lie). It's all one poem like we're all children of God (substitute your own deity or favorite concept for the word God).

/jack
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