Kurt
Brown
“Future Ship” is a poem I had wanted to write for some time, but for which I had trouble finding the right form. When I hit upon the idea of alternating long and short lines arranged in a balanced nine-line stanzas, I was able to include some material—disparate memories—which had eluded me before. That is to say, narrative material from my past which seemed to resist being made into poetry. The poem both makes statements, and presents scenes, and is meant to suggest a wholistic view of what is certainly not experienced as unified or continuous—i.e. the past. The short lines are not broken-off parts of the long lines which precede them, but separate and discrete lines in themselves, meant to be a kind of spring or fulcrum to propel the reader forward into the next long line. The poem makes an attempt to represent the paradoxical idea that some memories are both illusory and immortal. At least, they feel that way.
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