Knowledge – Louise Bogan
Essay on the Personal -- Stephen Dunn
The Pulses -- Albert Goldbarth
I believe in all that has never yet been spoken -- Rainer Maria Rilke
Knowledge – Stephen Dunn
Bogan's 8 line, two stanza, one sentence poem seems to speak of experience with a gnostic flavor -- as if realizing to be alive is to be a stranger in a world that is flawed. What does it mean to the speaker to lie (still); to learn how trees make a long shadow and light sound. Is that for humans to do? What do we need to learn?
She doesn't offer anything but what she has learned: treasure is brittle; passion does not have lasting warmth, if warm at all. Enigmatic and provocative.
Dunn's Essay is not an essay, but rather a challenging contradiction between objective and personal statements. We describe... until we're ready. For what?
Practise kissing on stones. What is the "fine edge" to bring to the parents.
Finally, if "personal" goes the way of "belief" -- can we trust it?
What is style? And love, is not just about what we love, but finally, beyond that --
understanding that our understanding is only partial -- but accepting that "almost satisfactory sense" of it.
Goldbarth's poem is fun, witty... Putrify your water instead of purify...
Relive not relieve your stress...
"The small things that we need to love, we need to love as if they were epic."
Our days are not "thick" with error, but rather "sick" with error. Pulse, yet, not plus. Is virus, wire uses? or latin for vir with an "us" ?
Rilke returns a sense of childlike innocence that doesn't allow the ego to block.
A prayer to do what has to be done. (Letter to a young poet: *Ich glaube an alles noch nie gesagte – I believe in everything that has not yet been said – ...
And finally, Stephen Dunn: "Knowledge"
God KNOWS...
Gravitas
Presto.
God knows nothing we don't know.
We gave him every word he ever said.
A strange little poem -- filled with conundrum, yet appearing simple.
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