(no subject)

They lean out from your eyes and peer around
And take in all that you do, every sight,
And others in your earways catch each sound
And all meet in the den to talk all night.

And some are dated nineteen eighty six,
And some sound just like people that you've known.
Some shrill emphatic moods are in the mix.
You almost never find yourself alone.

They laugh and eat and argue and ignore
And rarely more than half agree, except
When someone wonders what's behind a door.
The stampede stops the second that you've stepped
To see, then all are lolling like before.

We keep collecting selves till we're what's kept.

(no subject)

The thesis of this book is not a strikingly original one: American poets have generally regarded nature neither as a picturesque source of imagery nor a repository of metaphysical truths but as a ground upon which to investigate fundamental epistemological and esthetic questions, questions about "how and how much we know, and the power of artists to discover or create meaning and form" ...

Dismissive first sentence of a twenty year old review of a twenty year old book, at which my inner reaction was "uh-oh." Though I'm interested more in specifics: what features let you investigate what questions, how the investigations proceed, reach some kind of end. As I imagine the book being snooted at was - better find that book.

Though I'm not quite sure how 'ground upon which to investigate etc.' is distinct from 'repository of metaphysical truths' - I guess because it allows the possibility of ambiguity or failure? But those would pretty much be the metaphysical truths, then, no? And were British Romantic poets ever not doing the same thing? If we expand 'nature' as inclusive of situations of people among people, was Shakespeare?

I guess I'm not after originality anyway so much as getting at the specifics of why the methods of these poems (etc.) are so damn crucial, why it's these that unlose us.