Ekphrasis: poetic writing on art Criticism isn’t a form of poetic writing, but the form I plan to use for my text on Agnes Martin, the essay, might be. On can write a lyrical essay. It will be difficult, but I believe it is possible if one let’s the art one writes about seep into…
Tag: poetics
window moment
a window moment Jane Hirshfield: Many good poems have a kind of window-moment in them–a point at which they change their direction of gaze or thought in a way that suddenly opens a broadened landscape of meaning and feeling. Encountering such a moment, the reader breathes in some new infusion, as steeply perceptible as any…
Existence itself is nothing if not an amazement
I’m reading Ten Windows by Jane Hirshfield. It’s a great book, a book to read slowly, to partake in. And it is a text very relevant to my ongoing investigation in the uses of art – listen to this: Poïesis as making A work of art is not a piece of fruit lifted from a branch:…
A poem is like an eye chart
The job of the poet is to seduce the reader – – According to Billy Collins it is “about achieving a balance between “clarity and mystery. It’s important to know which card to turn over and which to lay face-down. But the beginning of a poem should always be very clear, to get a reader…
– it takes half an hour to write an article …
Italo Calvino via Time’s Flow Stemmed They want articles all over the place and I write them because it takes half an hour to write an article. To write an article not to do an article. To do an article you have to … * Italo Calvino * * Want to know more about Italo Calvino? Have a look…
A Sorrow Beyond Dreams
SHORT VERSION: Peter Handke’s A Sorrow Beyond Dreams (Wunschloses Unglück) is a stroke of genius! LONGER: A Sorrow Beyond Dreams is a short story about the suicide of a poor, sad and disillusioned Austrian woman who happened also to be Peter Handke’s mother. The book was written in 1972, shortly after the woman’s death. This…
White matter … (s)
I’m reading Kim Addonizio’s book Ordinary genius, a guide for the poet within (2009). In the beginning I didn’t really like her workbook-ish style, but gradually my impression changed, and now, a quarter into the book, I’m indeed starting to enjoy it. In between writing challenges & exercise there are some very interesting and important…
Literary theory according to Jenny Boully
The experience of time translates itself into language, and language translates itself into distance, which translates itself into longing, which is the realization of time. (…) how sad and strange that I, Jenny Boully, should be the sign of a signifier or the signifier of a sign, moreover, the sign of a signifier searching for…
Poetics
One thing the great poet confessed before biting into her doughnut: a good poem writes itself as if it doesn’t care – – Jenny Boully The Body (2002)
Wrapping up
What I like best with Dobyns’ essay Deception is its simple and direct style. His text is easy accessible, easy to understand and agree or disagree with. Nothing fancy, no profound bottomlessness which so often is the case in contemporary literary theory. Deception is talking directly to me as a reader and writer, not hiding…
sub rosa 