Song of a Reformed Headhunter

Edited by James Engell and W. Jackson Bate (Princeton University Press) Our genuine admiration of a great poet is a continuous under-current of feeling; it is every where present, but seldom any where as a separate excitement. I was wont boldly to affirm, that it would scarcely be more difficult to push a stone out from the pyramids with the bare hand, than to alter a word, or the position of a word, in Milton or Shakspeare, (in their most important works at least), without making the author say something else, or something worse, than he does say.  *  And therefore is it the prime merit of genius and its most unequivocal mode of manifestation, so to represent familiar objects as to awaken in the minds of others a kindred feeling concerning them and that freshness of sensation which is the constant accompaniment of mental, no less than of bodily, convalescence.  *  I regard truth as a divine ventriloquist: I care not from whose mouth the sounds are suppose...

So many seeds in the self-seeding spider flower pushing through the fence

A sprig of leaves from an old tree stump spills

"What must or might be said now about poetry?" I might have said something to the Progressive Poetics project, initiated and organized by H. L. Hix. The Progressive Poetics project asks each contributor to respond, in light of something she or he has already said in print, to this question:  “Poetry makes nothing happen.” (W. H. Auden, 1939)  “To write poetry after Auschwitz is barbaric.” (Theodor Adorno, 1949)  Though often cited as timeless, authoritative truths about poetry, those two pronouncements were made at particular historical moments, in particular cultural contexts, and from particular subject positions. But we (choose any “we” from those of us alive now) occupy various subject positions, live in various circumstances, and stand nearer the mid-twenty-first century than the mid-twentieth. It is not self-evident that we should (continue to) defer to Auden and Adorno, so:  What must or might be said now about poetry?

After seeing the Yoko Ono retrospective at MoMA: Someone painted half a moon tonight Yoko Ono

WL recommended Steven Pinker's The Sense of Style . Pinker is a graceful and persuasive advocate for what he calls the classic style. To write clearly and expressively, as if showing a reader a view outside the window, or engaging a reader in a conversation of equals, one can do worse than consult this book. My one reservation is that the classic style is not the only style of value. Pinker admits as much, but he is a partisan. * Summer sunset fingers smelling of oranges

Tied to my feet my late summer shadow a rat runs over