What I Is

I have had in my position for a few years now a small and fragile piece I-shaped wood found in floor of probably the largest building in Dreamtime Village in West Lima, Wisconsin. In the floor of this building there were a number of other I's in the floor, but I picked this one essentially at random. Sometime over the years a small piece of this had disappeared, but I kept the I, as a memory of a visit to see mIEKAL aND and CamillE Bacos, as a memory of a few short days' respite from my regular life, and a memory of my only real vacation in many years.

But I picked up the piece of wood, the piece of word, so that I could fashion some kind of object poem out of it. When I do such, I have only vague ideas what I will eventually do with the object, and those ideas usually coincide with the reality I produce only more vaguely. I wait for some kind of inspiration, and when that comes I finally make the piece.

That inspiration came on Saturday, January 28th, two days ago. While I looked at the piece of wood  (a piece of the word "I") on a window sill, I devised the entire text of the poem ("the litt/lest part of I"). This came to me all at once, as if thought out in advance, except that I decide, after about a second, to split the word "littlest" into two for two reasons: two increase the meaning and to allow the word to fit across the narrow width of the I.

Almost immediately, I began a search for my diecut metal letters and a hammer, and within an hour I was stamping the letters into the wood and then painting it with watercolors. Because the watercolors needed to dry, the painting (followed by the recoloring in of the letters so that they would remain visible) took and extra day, and I finished the process yesterday, Sunday, January 29th.

The little video above shows the entire poem and include a brief explanation of the genesis and meaning of the poem.


ecr. l'inf.