January 8, 2020
Erica Charis-Molling, “Negation”
“When I write, “Nobody spoke,” I’m not just describing the opposite of a chattering room. I’m signaling that a room that could be full of chatter, that one might even expect to be full of sound, was quiet. I’ve built two worlds: the one that exists and the one that might have or should have existed.”
Gina Franco, “’Where nothing is, but all things seem’: Simile and Negation”
“Simile seeks out analogies, parallels, repetitions, and semblances, often in ways that extend, supplant, and reassemble original points of comparison. It exposes perspective—the opinion at work in any attempt to speak truth. And it assimilates parts of the world into figures of language that reflect perception and the movements of thought.”
Mary Ann Samyn, “Bring Yourself Along”
Sandy Solomon, “On Gusto in Poetry”“Here, then, is what poetry can do. It can combine its details to communicate more than one aspect of the truth: to communicate both thought and feeling; describe both physical and emotional facts; capture conflicting impulses; hold more than one meaning, more than one thought, more than one feeling; describe different kinds of sensation; encourage the reader to know more than one moment in time. What gives these moments in the poem more power than other moments is the way in which they involve the reader’s imagination. They stimulate an energetic consideration of what is. In this way, the work involved in comprehending the whole through the relationship among its parts excites the reader’s sensibility.”