open sky :: SAMVAAD |29th October
- sanjuktaa
- Oct 29, 2023
- 1 min read
hosts : Sanjuktaa Asopa & Aparna Pathak
burl bark grown into a wound a word
- Mark Harris
(Frogpond 34.1)
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hosts : Sanjuktaa Asopa & Aparna Pathak
burl bark grown into a wound a word
- Mark Harris
(Frogpond 34.1)
Some poems stay with you throughout life. This amazing one is surely one of them.
Loved the poem for completing the circle from
'into a wound a word burl bark'
Asked about "the story behind the making of the verse", Mark Harris says: it came out of an extended meditation on preconceptions about ability/disability, order/disorder, beauty/ugliness, perfection/imperfection, similarity/difference, and of course language-- a body of work mostly brought together in my book BURL.
The burl (American English) or burr (British English) is a tree growth in which the grain has grown in a deformed manner. It is commonly found in the form of a rounded outgrowth on a tree trunk or branch that is filled with small knots from dormant buds. Burl formation is typically a result of some form of stress such as an injury or a viral or fungal infection.
(From Wikipedia)
One single word uttered by that one person growing into a wound over a period of time....just like this burl bark on which the grain has grown in a deformed manner due to some form of stress.
A befitting correlation!