About the Poems - SS
About the Poems
by Sampson Starkweather The LA LA LAs are an attempt at being as awesome as possible. They are that part of the song where the singer says fuck words, and simply makes up the coolest sounding noises he or she can think of. Formally, they are like assassins of the work I’d been writing leading up to this point, which tended to be serialized prose, usually on the dark side. I wasn’t sure if I could even break a line anymore. I wanted the line breaks to offer mini-poems on every line, then expand or implode every 2 or 3 more lines by hyperbolizing the double entendres, unwinding meanings, tensions, and surprises the breaks create. The LA LA LAs enact a series of collapses, the way I heard this miner who was interviewed on NPR talk about how when mines are collapsed, thousands of new mines, tunnels, and passageways open up that were previously hidden, and whole new worlds are revealed and accessible. But mostly, they are about awesomeness.