Questions for Poison

by Adrian Dallas Frandle

“For me, there’s an ever-present tension in poiesis between the abstract and the concrete, the psychic and the sensuous, between Truth and Appearance.”

This poem originally had the title, “Questions for a Poison Swamp,” which is admittedly a case of my video game influences surfacing. A defining feature of my favorite games is an intentional immersion in a challenging bog. But it seemed an appropriate setting for the quagmire I think poetry is always attempting to traverse. At least for me, there’s an ever-present tension in poiesis between the abstract and the concrete, the psychic and the sensuous, between Truth and Appearance. I don’t want to tread in the muck and imply that these dualities are analogous to each other, or even that they’re essential or insurmountable in themselves, just that they seem to be mutually animating forces when I consider infectious questions like, What does poetry do in the world? This poem is a particularly swirly way, in the shape of my inner-ear’s whorls and eddies, of locating this question in the gift of the body (i.e. that which is given) and its relationship to the natural universe that contains and is contained by it. Contaminated with wonder.

I’m not always the best at workshops, as I tend to value my personal struggles and victories when writing, and as with playing video games, I prefer the solitude of single-player adventures. However, I happened to bring this poem to workshop and received valuable feedback on how to attune my inner sonic sensibilities to be more legible to readers (at least affectually) and to help make the wonders of the poem felt in the reading. One alteration was widening the entrance to the poem by generalizing the title (hence the current, more existentially open and oriented: “Questions for Poison”). Another change was to allow more light in, to let the stars shine, even in indifference. I believe the experience of the poem should be in its expression as it unfurls. The swirl, the tension of poison and body, of earth and stars, of everything before “the door closes” should point to that wonder. Wonder is also a way of questioning, and I hope the poem is a kind of pre-echo of the impossible answers we might receive after.

Adrian Dallas Frandle (they/he) is a queer fish who writes to and for the world about its future. They are Poetry Acquisitions Editor for Variant Lit. Book of Extraction: Poems with Teeth out now with Kith Books. Recent work in Honey Literary, The Blue Mountain Review and The 2023 Connecticut Literary Anthology by Woodhall Press. Read more at adriandallas.com.

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