Frame to your Mother

Seeing a lot of frames lately. Hearing some too. Not using pronouns. Doing a lot of that to start the blog.

I see frames not as literary/critical devices. I think the most recent iteration of frames had something to do with deconstructing frames as implicit context forms (who's the framer; framers dictate frames; frames reinforce the power structure of framing, etc.). But I think that spiel has run its course, so we are more or less allowed to think about frames in a somewhat unframed discussion.

I see frames somewhat, these days, the way I see painting stretchers. I mean wooden stretchers one assembles into a rectangular form to accommodate a stretched canvas. But I don't see frames accommodating anything really. I tend to see them as having been erected, then collapsing. The way painting stretchers can collapse one way or another if you but some laterally intended weight on them.

I see frames that do not bend, but I think they might bend and even fall apart. No doubt, to be assembled again. When I was painting, I would choose the stretchers (for framing the canvas) by laying them out on the floor of the paint supply store, substituting lengths, until the proportions suited the painting I had in mind. I never erred in this practice. I have never stretched a canvas then thought, Oh dear, this is all wrong. No, the stretched canvas always suited the painting, the way a pool accommodates the swimmer.

I wonder if this anecdote points to anything other than a kind of tendency. Probably not. But right there I am letting a frame go, I suppose.

I have done this letting go of frames more often than is good for me, I suppose. I write a kind of poetry that I should work to present as the poetry I write, with explanations and frames, frames of frames. But perhaps the block form of the poetry precludes further attempts to frame. Nature abhors a clean surface, you know. Nature wreaks havoc on lovely blocks.

Well, let nature have its way, I say. I will make blocks and time and the elements can kick them around, or not, as they see fit. I am a terrible framer. I don't explain things very well. But I can put something together as well as anyone, or so it seems to me. I may be a bit of a block, myself. I don't know that such a person can do much to change their relationship with themselves. Such a person can be employed, or they erode. Even by themselves, sitting there, they prompt thoughts of another way to do things.

Well, I hope I am a nice block. For a block, that is.