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Stretching for Allusion
I wonder how some lines in a poem by Tim Dlugos play out if you don’t connect with an allusion to Raymond Burr’s character, Perry Mason, in Ironside. The gestural quality transcends the allusion: Like wheelchair detectives we reach for … Continue reading
Training and Birthing
In Against Interpretation, Susan Sontag offers this one striking line: “Anthropology is necrology.” Short and pithy, it occurs in an essay full of luxurious sentences where the elegant comma reigns; it is entitled “The anthropologist as hero” and I begin … Continue reading
Xenobotany
That Sandra Kasturi got me to thinking. There is in her collection The Animal Bridgroom a final poem called “Falling” where some lines just drag upon the brain of the dendrologist. […] or frenzied whirl of helicopter seed pods from … Continue reading
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Further Reading
Exercise imagination or beware. So says Vita Sackville-West in the introductory paragraph to Nursery Rhymes (Dropmore Press, 1947). Samuel Taylor Coleridge once remarked that he could not “recollect a more astonishing image than that of a whole rookery that flew … Continue reading
Circle Figure
Who you hold hands with influences your experience of the circle. The hermeneutical analysis of the interrelation of literary understanding and historical understanding follows from and encapsulates the arguments of previous chapters for the essential interconnection of understanding, interpretation, and … Continue reading
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Botany Lesson
Richelle Kosar has her narrator who displays a penchant for descriptions of fragrance describe one particular morning. The next morning I walked in the white garden, sipping a cup of coffee. The sunlight was bright […] Light was sparkling on … Continue reading
Clatter and Buried Melodies
From a description of vibraphonist Gary Burton published in TED 9 (Teaching, Entertainment, Design) Fast Company, 1999, an apology for music Burton believes the pleasure of music has a formative impact on the brain. In a sense, entertainment is education. … Continue reading
Avian Perspective
Richelle Kosar in her novel The Drum King has her narrator-protagonist observe the birds: Gulls were circling across the radiant clouds with wild, faraway cries. It struck me how beautiful and graceful they appeared at a distance; you could almost … Continue reading
Sexviation
In Jack Vance’s 1978 sci-fi novel Wyst: Alastor 1716 we are treated to descriptions of Arrabus on the planet Wyst which is an “egalistic” nation. Our protagonist, a visitor to this world and nation, is in conversation with the alluring … Continue reading
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Rhetoric of Refutation
There is a certain pleasure in reading Hilary Putnam that is unrelated to the unfolding of the argument. It is found in the little asides that connive to bring the reader into the game. Take for instance the sly stab: … Continue reading