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Coetzee on “The Music”
Astonishingly, in dribs and drabs, the music comes. Sometimes the contour of a phrase occurs to him before he has a hint of what the words themselves will be; sometimes the words call forth the cadence; sometimes the shade of a melody, having hovered for days on the edge of hearing, unfolds and blessedly reveals itself. —J. M.Read More
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Whose Side Are You On?
I side with those, like the Irish poet Sinéad Morrissey, who prefer Collecteds to Selecteds. (See my earlier post for Morrissey’s poem on the subject.) But what if there’s no Collected? Such beasts are typically posthumous affairs and take years to assemble, which seems to be the case for William Stafford. But one of the pleasures to be had from a Collected edition—instances of early poems written during a poet’s formative years—are at least available now in Stafford’s case.Read More