I want to say a little more about herbs/spices and poetry. Before you even consider that I was on to something, I wasn’t. As I stated it – when? last week? – the poem pot is little more than you’d find in most British bookstores (now that Compendium is closed). Herbs/spices engage our olfactory, gustatory, and mnemonic senses in a very direct way. I’m curious about the senses poetry engages. The writing of it certainly involves a great deal of senses (ever been in the middle of a great – possibly stoned- thought and had the doorbell ring?) and this sensory material certainly channels into the poem itself. Thinking of Jackobson’s axis of selection, one must concede that selection is not a mental process but an environmental one. But all that goes into writing is seemingly stripped away the moment another reader opens the book and what enters is the environment of the reader. It’s on this level that herbs and spices meet poetry. Herbs and spices also have ‘environmental lives’ and in fact are more extreme – being earth-bound products – in that they are in constant need of verification (what better word is there? Who knows the smell of the cinnamon tree without a being around?) moreso than poems. At any rate, I like to wonder what the possibilities are that we poets give up on the method of making ‘reader oriented’ texts and think more about the fabric of the reader? That is, making the reader aware of the process of meaning making rather than thatshe is making meaning. Instructions?? I will be submitting my postcards to the mail art expo in Buenos Aires.