A Poet's Alphabet <continued> P is for the passage of time. It is also for the secret passage that leads out of time into the stillness of what has not yet been named into being, the passage that leads to the birthplace of poems. It is for the passage that is the route of my passing, my having been, and for the passage of places into history, and through history into forgottenness. Q is for the questionable in matters relating to poetry, lines or images for which no precedent comes immediately to mind and whose virtues seem equally elusive. In time, our wayward lines and images may become our greatest successes, the true signs of our authorship. But when we are young we are slow to trust ourselves, preferring to sound like more established writers. For that is how we make sure that what we have written is indeed poetry. Eventually, we learn to mistrust what what is patently derived, and we cultivate what we first perceived as weakness. It is the oddity of our poems,their idiosyncrasy, their lapses into a necessary awkwardness, their ultimate frailty, that charms and satisfies. R is for Rilke, whose poems I read for inspiration of a peculiar sort, since what I get mainly when I read him is a sense of uplift, some lavish and ornate attempt to locate being, certain moments of ecstatic insight close to the truth, or what I believe to be true. I feel the unutterable has found a place in what has been uttered. I am thinking of Part I of The Spanish Trilogy, and the ninth of The Duino Elegies, and "Orpheus. Eurydice. Hermes," and "Lament," and "Evening." <To be continued.... > -- ○ ╭╭╮╭╮╭╮╮ ＊ ｏ │╯│╰││╰│ ↗↗ 。 ╰╮││││╮│ ╳╳ ∥▎▍╰╯╯╰╯╰╰╯▌╱▊ s.i.n.c.e ∥▎▍╭╮╮╭╮╭╭╮▌﹨▊﹍﹎ ﹡1981 --

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