There's Beauty in the Bellow

Critics depend upon structured arguments to make their points. A novelist primarily structures not arguments for the reader but experiences. Unlike our more random encounters with the actual world, the experiences we find in a novel are entirely verbal in origin, and they are shaped by their creator specifically with us, the readers, in mind. As we progress through a novel, we live in its world with an intense, imaginative participation very rarely, if ever, generated in us by any kind of purely expository writing. Thus somewhere--exactly where, no artist and no critic has ever discovered--between the immediacy of a lived, concrete encounter, and the limited intellectual engagement created by expository prose, exists the mysterious participatory experience offered by imaginative literature. The Religious Dimension of Jane Austen's Novels , Gene Koppel, 122.

Wash, rinse and dry grapes. Wash, rinse and dry cilantro. Pick a firm grape. (Usually the firm ones fall off first when you shake the bunch.) Tear off a few leaves of cilantro. Deposit cilantro and grape in your mouth. Bite into the grape with your back teeth so that it bursts in your mouth. Press the cilantro against your tongue as you eat.

Her method was just that: the intensification, or concentration, if meaning in words until they glowed "as no sapphire"---until, that is, they became, in mutually supportive combination, the Word, a poem that could "dwell among us," alive, a corporate fusion of meaning and (like human life) mystery. This sense of life is the most difficult of all things to create---and she knew that, too. This is one reason, surely, why many of her poems seem cryptic, incomplete, barely reducible to coherent statement, as if she was conscious of an element of the ineffable, even in usual things, like hummingbirds of sunsets. ~ The Life of Emily Dickinson , Richard B. Sewall

Then I was beside Him, as a master workman; And I was daily His delight, Rejoicing always before Him, Rejoicing in the world, His earth, And having my delight in the sons of men. Proverbs 8:30-31 Isn't this what poets, artists and writers are supposed to do?

447 This was a Poet — It is That Distills amazing sense From ordinary Meanings — And Attar so immense From the familiar species That perished by the Door — We wonder it was not Ourselves Arrested it — before — Of Pictures, the Discloser — The Poet — it is He — Entitles Us — by Contrast — To ceaseless Poverty — Of portion — so unconscious — The Robbing — could not harm — Himself — to Him — a Fortune — Exterior — to Time — 455 TRIUMPH – may be of several kinds – There’s triumph in the room When that Old Imperator – Death – By Faith – be overcome – There’s Triumph of the finerMmind When Truth – affronted long – Advance unmoved – to Her Supreme – Her God – Her only Throng – A Triumph when Temptation’s Bribe Is slowly handed back – One eye upon the Heaven renounced – And One – upon the Rack – Severer Triumph – by Himself Experienced – who pass Acquitted – from that Naked Bar – Jehovah’s Countenance –

Essays into poetry: Let me fill this pot -- Roots thickening, moist, whitish flesh-- Then move me, make me face The shock of Transplant Then grow again-- Moderating my sun, Spritzing my leaves. Master Gardener: Prune me, let me thrive; Tend me, let me live. Star-gazing Warm hood-- Watching the darkness: Bright foreigners Stare back. The leaves bleed out their chlorophyllic green Flutter to the ground in gold, parchment-brown litter-- The old strews the stable for the new, mulch and fruit Somehow-- Something grows underneath Pressing the earth. Maybe that's it: The leaf leaps precipitous from the branch to meet it. The arbor lifts and sun shines direct into the nest For a short time. I think it was Ted Kooser in his Poetry Home Repair Manual who defined poetry as words with funny line breaks. I'd like to discipline my lines more. But since these are not assignments, I'm not squeezing my brain to push the words around. (And when you are doing ...