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Poetry Month 2016: Xochiquetzal Candelaria
Sappho Fragments—a line, sometimes eight, one scrap found stuffed in the mouth of a mummified cat. Let’s say we know this as we know the cat once roamed light-footed through a garden of hyacinth and violets, inking between the legs of guests, sheer linen— dressed dancers, lute players. Everyone drunk. In one jump the cat lands on a whitewashed wall between shards of broken glass on a cliff giving way to the sea.Read More
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On Imaginal Space
[This expands on my previous post, which it may help to read first.] I use the word “imaginal” to mean something far beyond the Webster’s definition, “of or relating to imagination, images, or imagery.” I mean it in the sense defined by the great scholar of Islamic mysticism Henry Corbin: …alam al-mithal, the world of the Image, mundus imaginalis: a world as ontologically real as the world of the senses and the world of the intellect, a world that requires a faculty of perception belonging to it, a faculty that is a cognitive function, a noetic value, as fully real…Read More
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In Praise of Serendipity (UPDATED)
A couple of weeks ago I was visiting family in Eugene, Oregon, a small city with several excellent used book stores. In my favorite store, Tsunami Books, I picked up Linda Hamalian‘s A Life of Kenneth Rexroth for a mere six bucks. The picture she paints of Rexroth isn’t pretty—a tale of paranoia, sexist behavior, personal violence, egotism; serial infidelity on the one hand and pie-eyed romanticism on the other—but through it all Rexroth’s powerful intellect and creative energy radiate.Read More
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Sappho of Lesbos
I didn’t intend to review out-of-print books, but the other day I picked up Sappho of Lesbos: Her Life and Times, by Arthur Weigall, at my favorite used book store (Fahrenheit’s), and from the moment I looked into it I couldn’t put it down. The book came out in 193, and Weigall was already an old man. His style reminds me a bit of what little I’ve read of William Dean Howells—clean, willowy, quietly witty. No great genius in it, but what fun to read! Here’s a taste: In the year 591 B.C.Read More