Gaston Bachelard, By Chance
I was reshelving a book in my office and noticed a volume on the shelf that I hadn’t picked up in a couple of years– a collection of selections from the work of Gaston Bachelard, On Poetic Imagination and Reverie (edited by Collette Gaudin). I remembered being disappointed when I first got the book that it [...]
Back
I’ve been back in the US for the better part of a week now, but I brought back a head / chest cold from hell so I haven’t really felt like making any final comments about my time in Vietnam. I still don’t have anything coherent to say, but will get around to it in [...]
Twanging the Plumbline
As noted in a couple of previous posts, I have been participating in a discussion of poetics initiated by Henry Gould at a new blog, The Plumbline School, cross-posting a few of my comments here as well when they seemed detachable from their Plumbline context. There are, at last count, four participants in the project, [...]
How to Read a Poem*
Instructions: Begin, in so far as it’s possible, without preconceptions and do not rush to make a judgment about whether you like or dislike a poem, or whether it’s good or bad; most of all, do not dismiss mysteries or difficulties as weird or incomprehensible (at least) until you have worked through the steps below. [...]
