Note
In its formal articulations, this sequence might be seen as having echoes to the “double exposure,” a form credited to the contemporary poet Greg Williamson, in which (as the Norton Anthology of Poetry has it) “three poems can be read in one: the bold type, the standard type, and the combination.”
In our own poem, the parenthetical-response sections are grammatically and syntactically continuous with their preceding base aphorism (i.e. the non-parenthetical sections). As well, all of the parenthetical-response sections are syntactically continuous, thus forming a whole unit within the poem, each section bearing an anticipatory lexical sounding of the aphorism immediately below it.
Thus, the text lends itself to not just three, but at least six ways of reading: with discrete focus upon the base aphorisms; with discrete focus upon the grammatically linked base aphorisms and parenthetical-response pairings (as in renga linking); with focus on the lexical linking between parenthetical-response sections and the base aphorisms following; with focus upon the grammatically linked parenthetical-response sections, individually or in sequence; with focus upon the combinatorial possibilities across the poem made available by the aphoristic or provisional nature of all entries; with focus on the total serial sequence.
If we were to give this form of aphoristic proceeding a name (and why not?), we would call it “fable tableaux.”
AMc, KJ