A Poet's Alphabet <continued>
P is for the passage of time. It is also for the secret passage that leads out
of time into the stillness of what has not yet been named into being, the
passage that leads to the birthplace of poems. It is for the passage that is
the route of my passing, my having been, and for the passage of places into
history, and through history into forgottenness.
Q is for the questionable in matters relating to poetry, lines or images for
which no precedent comes immediately to mind and whose virtues seem equally
elusive. In time, our wayward lines and images may become our greatest
successes, the true signs of our authorship. But when we are young we are slow
to trust ourselves, preferring to sound like more established writers. For that
is how we make sure that what we have written is indeed poetry. Eventually, we
learn to mistrust what what is patently derived, and we cultivate what we first
perceived as weakness. It is the oddity of our poems,their idiosyncrasy, their
lapses into a necessary awkwardness, their ultimate frailty, that charms and
satisfies.
R is for Rilke, whose poems I read for inspiration of a peculiar sort, since
what I get mainly when I read him is a sense of uplift, some lavish and ornate
attempt to locate being, certain moments of ecstatic insight close to the
truth, or what I believe to be true. I feel the unutterable has found a place
in what has been uttered. I am thinking of Part I of The Spanish Trilogy, and
the ninth of The Duino Elegies, and "Orpheus. Eurydice. Hermes," and "Lament,"
and "Evening."
<To be continued.... >
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ｏ │╯│╰││╰│ ↗↗
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∥▎▍╰╯╯╰╯╰╰╯▌╱▊ s.i.n.c.e
∥▎▍╭╮╮╭╮╭╭╮▌﹨▊﹍﹎ ﹡1981
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