tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2176387186088706590.post6893184616638867963..comments2020-04-03T13:59:00.172-06:00Comments on The Widening Spell: Top Ten Poetry Books for your Holiday Wish List: The Bread of Time by Philip LevineTerry Lucashttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09344475079916141270noreply@blogger.comBlogger2125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2176387186088706590.post-17483149456374136702012-12-22T08:14:50.067-07:002012-12-22T08:14:50.067-07:00Holy shit! It's a Christmas miracle! The can...Holy shit! It's a Christmas miracle! The candle is still burning! Now that I have destroyed its truth, I found it:<br /><br />When I write and think about my thirty-odd year long exploration of My-Friend-the-Poet-Morris-McCorvey's observation that, "The poet's work is seeing," it is this kind of experience I have been chasing, tasting, holding, releasing, spreading... In the language I have been using, this entrance into poetry is an entrance into The Way of Seeing. "These hands have entered the ground from which they sprang," is a moment of such seeing, a first step of The Way, and Levine's telling of it invites the reader to put her hands into the same earth, to smell it as it sifts through his fingers, to see it as the same substance or spirit or whole as the stars and the fertile dark soil in which they grow.<br /><br />Trying to teach someone to write poetry without trying to lead someone to an entry like this is an opportunity for a brilliant simile of futility and emptiness, but, for the life of me, with my hands so full of the rich darkness of the earth and all things, I do not want to give emptiness another thought. Instead, I think I will rise and glide out into the yard, to the driveway, on the way to buy that last Christmas present and, in the frantic Saturday rush, from time to time, look up in perfect silence at the stars.granddaddyhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/02668155652942615504noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2176387186088706590.post-48783530880521600762012-12-22T08:11:58.342-07:002012-12-22T08:11:58.342-07:00String of vile expletives exploding like angry vom...String of vile expletives exploding like angry vomit! <br /><br /> I just wrote a profound and moving comment about the absolute perfection of Levine on entering poetry. Well, at least I was profoundly moved and wrote about it.<br /><br />And then, paraphrasing Whitman, I prepared to post and leave for last-minute shopping mall horrors while looking up from time to time at the stars. And the fucking computer dog ate my fucking homework! And all I have left is a handful of dogshit where seconds ago I held a handful of the same fertile soil in which Levine planted stars.granddaddyhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/02668155652942615504noreply@blogger.com