Scott Simpson · Poetry

VI. Visibility

The World We Mean · Culture, Memory, and Shared Meaning · Singing · VI. Visibility

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Poem segment 1

VI. Visibility

What changes most

is visibility.

The process no longer hides itself.

You can watch language assembling

in real time.

Prompt.

Response.

Revision.

Variation.

The machinery of meaning

moves closer to the surface.

And suddenly

the solitary creator fades a little.

You see the network underneath:

books speaking through books,

voices stitched from other voices,

culture rewriting itself continuously

through us.

The machine did not invent this.

It illuminated it.

Like lightning briefly revealing

the entire valley at night—

roads, rivers, fences,

all connected already

before the flash arrived.