Patience, Devin, if I dodder along here: two thoughts.
1) I think the ‘em dash is not a breathing out, but a breathing in before the held full stop “in which” a recognition occurs and “from which” recognition the following line is breathed out or “spoken” (whatever else they are, words are performance - for the reader and the writer.)
2) FWIW, both today’s and last week’s meditation put me in mind of Melville’s oracular claim for literature: “For genius, all over the world, stands hand in hand, and one shock of recognition runs the whole circle round.” I think you’ve been talking about that “shock of recognition” (nice title for a book, thank you Edmund Wilson) for a while now...I’ll just dodder off now.
Oh thank you! So many thoughts come up. The simple act of attention can alter the tiniest thing all the way up to the whole world. These beautiful poems strike home. Was it Mary Oliver, in her older years, who wrote a poem about not going to social things because "there is so much to say goodbye to"? What was that poem?
Your deep dive and delve into the grandeur of language; your palpable awe in the presence of the numen that lives at the esse of a great poem ... thank you. I'm sort of flailing about, broken open and voiceless after reading your posts on Kenyon and Glück. I've often thought Kenyon's work was overlooked because of who her husband was. Her poems were so exquisitely, achingly valedictory. And you've inspired me to read more of Glück -- I was never very moved by The Wild Iris and so didn't read her later work.
Patience, Devin, if I dodder along here: two thoughts.
1) I think the ‘em dash is not a breathing out, but a breathing in before the held full stop “in which” a recognition occurs and “from which” recognition the following line is breathed out or “spoken” (whatever else they are, words are performance - for the reader and the writer.)
2) FWIW, both today’s and last week’s meditation put me in mind of Melville’s oracular claim for literature: “For genius, all over the world, stands hand in hand, and one shock of recognition runs the whole circle round.” I think you’ve been talking about that “shock of recognition” (nice title for a book, thank you Edmund Wilson) for a while now...I’ll just dodder off now.
Vic
Oh thank you! So many thoughts come up. The simple act of attention can alter the tiniest thing all the way up to the whole world. These beautiful poems strike home. Was it Mary Oliver, in her older years, who wrote a poem about not going to social things because "there is so much to say goodbye to"? What was that poem?
Your deep dive and delve into the grandeur of language; your palpable awe in the presence of the numen that lives at the esse of a great poem ... thank you. I'm sort of flailing about, broken open and voiceless after reading your posts on Kenyon and Glück. I've often thought Kenyon's work was overlooked because of who her husband was. Her poems were so exquisitely, achingly valedictory. And you've inspired me to read more of Glück -- I was never very moved by The Wild Iris and so didn't read her later work.
My thanks.