Poetry As History, As Artifact, As Story Poem by Dennis Ryan

Wednesday afternoon, July 18,2018 at 1: 04 p.m.; Wednesday afternoon, September 5 at 1: 41 p.m.; Saturday night, January 12,2019 at 8: 20 p.m.

"The plotless work thus stands before us as a kind of rebus in narrative
language, a strange kind of code written in events or hieroglyphs, and
analogous to primitive myth, or fairytales... "
- Fredrick Jameson, "Metacommentary"

"The problem may not be how to get into history, but how to get out of it."
- Hayden White, "Getting Out of History"

I know where I am: the time, now, the place, here.
This seems the problem, and you here or somewhere
else as I tell stories about us:the things we do for
and against each other and others, going into great
detail at times.These are real stories—about how
we invest in time, and why we do so.If possible,
I would transcend time and history, escape cause
and effect the way Yeats tried, and Stevens tried,
the problem being to find a way out of history
when there's no exit and just this one reservation:
so long as you accompany me.This impulse cannot
be satisfied, history being what it is—monumental
and intractable— and in time these poems become
mere artifacts of our vain pursuits:they enshrine
our feeble efforts.Still, this feeling for time persists,
as does consciousness of myself and others, our
surroundings, the names and places, and what can
and can't be done in the time given us.Awareness.
We are history's actors, yet no plot is discernable:
things happen, sudden occurrences, their offshoots,
one fragmenting following rapidly after another.
We simply feel our way along with blind wands,
leaving childhood fantasies and our ideals behind.
We play our parts: we memorize, pose, posture, strut,
"history" directing our random, trauma-laced stories.