I like the original, and then as I read through your thoughts about each change, I liked the two line "a sleepwalker eats the womb/believing it the moon" It's more imagistic. Going back to the original, I see the poem is rhetorically a sentence that is "Not A ... but B ... " The images are strong in the original but there is a kind of rhetorical strategy that is not the same as the more declarative statement of 'A eats this, believes this' if you get what I'm saying. I hope you had a happy reading!
The first two lines woke me today—all the possibilities within and between those hands. When I played with them for a moment, I went to —rabbit, womb, crescent moon, hat.
Thanks for your thoughts. I think I may try a kind of compendium —joining in some way all the different attempt
I like the original, and then as I read through your thoughts about each change, I liked the two line "a sleepwalker eats the womb/believing it the moon" It's more imagistic. Going back to the original, I see the poem is rhetorically a sentence that is "Not A ... but B ... " The images are strong in the original but there is a kind of rhetorical strategy that is not the same as the more declarative statement of 'A eats this, believes this' if you get what I'm saying. I hope you had a happy reading!
The first two lines woke me today—all the possibilities within and between those hands. When I played with them for a moment, I went to —rabbit, womb, crescent moon, hat.