First off, there are some pics displayed (artwork by Falon Jones) - and then another poem by Blake Hall...called Necronomajia.
My favourite lines of the Necronomajia piece are (the last 5):
"It's changing my mind and it's changing my goals
And sometimes I wish it would just tell me
What I don't want to know...
Is it golden, is there silver in gold
Life is hopeless but the riddle is old"
Now it may or may not be significant that at the end of the last line, there's no period...
Regardless of whether Blake made a typo or not, to me, within the context of this piece being poetic, the lack of indication to "stop" as a punctuation mark, the period, commands - means that the entire last sentence is up for discussion, pondering over, consideration. Therefore, "life is hopeless" might be up for discussion rather than a conclusive, final statement. Also, it may be up for discussion, this riddle, its age - or maybe the un-ended statement (considering it without a stop/period/end) means the riddle is timeless and not bound by the constraints of our perception of time.
The last two lines, the words, "Is it golden, is there silver in gold - life is hopeless but the riddle is old" are both "questions" and statements...
There is no actual punctuation question mark, either - so by form, the words are a statement but by context, they are questions. As statements - something is golden and something else precious is in gold. As Two questions: Is it golden? Is there silver in gold? The last identifiable concept I can backtrack to is that the poet is speaking of a soul (the narrator's soul - might not be the poet himself - but is the character/speaker/narrator within the poem)...so, perhaps the soul is golden, according to the narrator within.
Luckily, a question is being asked - not only giving the reader permission - but actually commanding the reader to think about this concept... for me, punctuation cues in poetry are usually commands. Punctuation is often used in place of a word or to emphasize concepts that a poet has condensed the words for or used where a poet has taken away words - so I take every question mark and contextual question very seriously in poetic works - as a command to actively ponder the question.
"[...] And sometimes I wish [...]" occurs prior to these last lines, so the concepts in these particular words are important because they are stated more than once - within the confines of condensed poetic ideas. Often, with poetry, words are excluded, concepts refined down to as few words as possible - sometimes poetry is very much like a puzzle intended to be sorted out by the author...so when words repeat, I have learned that this often means the repeated words are some of the most important in the entire piece. ie: poets, stating one thing ONCE, rarely need to repeat a phrase or word unless doing so is an act of emphasis or contrast. Here, I think the said words are for emphasis. Also - there are two different wishes repeated - a lot going on here.
1 wish: To be left alone
2 wish: To be told something
The title, Necronomajia, in my opinion, must be Necro+Magic together. Magic. Death. Death leading to Magik (death to life - magic is often equated with energy/life). Death is Magick, and magic, since it is everywhere, belongs with death/life concepts. (Blake will have to correct me if I'm interpreting grossly wrong here). The term makes a lot of sense and has impact upon the senses when broken down like this... thus, Necronomajia is a written, poetic work about DeathMagick and ends with no end (period).
Very interesting.
I'll have to build a better summary later - the poem has given me a lot to think about and I'll actually have to go doodle this out a bit on paper...
Read the poem in its entirety on The 800 Days blog... let me know how YOU interpret the poetics.
The Day 725 post is associated with Sunday December 26 2010.
