{"id":1527,"date":"2008-12-23T10:00:53","date_gmt":"2008-12-23T10:00:53","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/ink.verticalplus.co.uk\/archive\/?p=1527"},"modified":"2008-12-23T10:00:53","modified_gmt":"2008-12-23T10:00:53","slug":"andrea-porters-been-reading-whitman","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/andrea-porters-been-reading-whitman\/","title":{"rendered":"Andrea Porter's been reading Whitman"},"content":{"rendered":"

Transcutaneous Electric Nerve Stimulation<\/span>
(<\/span>On Reading Whitman\u2019s I Sing the Body Electric<\/span>)<\/span>


This TENS machine knows its job, electric impulses<\/span>
sent out at just the appropriate levels to sting <\/span>
and twitch the muscles in a rhythmic cadence.<\/span>
I am reading Whitman by accident or on purpose.<\/span>
I have all maybes locked into each beat of me<\/span>
that feeds this aching body-soul Whitman calls up,<\/span>
shaman to DNA before the helix, namer of parts.<\/span>
Each pulse glints in the body, a salmon thrashing<\/span>
up river, caught in the leap to join where it began.<\/span>
I recognize the sympathy of hand when feeling<\/span>
the naked meat of the body threaded with electric.<\/span>
I sense the sugar of shock licking at the walls,<\/span>
the thinness of each sweetness, pain, together,<\/span>
the wonder in the flow that engulfs the house.<\/span>


* Andrea Porter is a member of the poetry performance group Joy of Six, which has performed in Britain and New York. She has been published in a number of poetry magazines (both paper and online) in the UK, Canada, Australia and USA. Her narrative sequence of poems <\/span>Bubble<\/span> was adapted as a drama for Radio 4 as a drama by the RSC dramatist Fraser Grace. She writes a fairly successful blog <\/span>We liked It But Not Quite Enough<\/span> \u2013 <\/span>www.welikeditbutnotquiteenough.blogspot.com<\/a> \u2013 and promises the agent she will get the rewrites to the novel soon. She has a full collection <\/span>A Season of Small Insanities<\/span> coming out with Salt Publishing in April 2009. <\/span>

<\/font><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Transcutaneous Electric Nerve Stimulation(On Reading Whitman\u2019s I Sing the Body Electric)This TENS machine knows its job, electric impulsessent out at just the appropriate levels to sting and twitch the muscles in a rhythmic cadence.I am reading Whitman by accident or on purpose.I have all maybes locked into each beat of methat feeds this aching body-soul […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1527","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-prose-poetry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1527","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1527"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1527\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1527"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1527"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1527"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}