Life is simple..
Act poor,
Act broke.
Have more than you show and
Speak less than you know.
Trust me, it'll save you from
How everything shines in the morning light
Breakage
I had a crush on her when she was a prefect
(hers is the face that swims into my head
when Katherine Mansfield's Maata is mentioned)
The icon that originally appeared on the desktop, Adcock tells me, was actually a small red dragon's head. (It's since been replaced by a less appealing green flame).
Powerful beasts, even mythical ones, have always attracted advertising (and branding) agencies. The recycling process hinted at here is fascinating: old myth into brand-name, brand-name into new myth, enabling the poet to give a digital "airy nothing" bodily and symbolic presence.
The poem begins at the beginning, almost in "once-upon-a-time" fashion, with a friendly nudge to the Dragon, as if inviting reminiscences.
It recalls the choice of Alice in Wonderland as the training text – because, Adcock says, "it seemed to me that the mythological creatures in that book would feel at home with a Dragon as part of their crew."
With no fiery breath of its own, and only metaphorical claws and wings, the virtual dragon proves a little slow-witted.
"If you pause between individual words the Dragon is less likely to understand them," Adcock says.
"It works by context – or at least that's the theory." In the poem, the Dragon's difficulties with its imaginative context are comically and engagingly drawn. Its mistakes can clearly be infuriating but its docility, though merely that of the machine, arouses the poet's, and the reader's, sympathy.
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