Conjunctions of the Literary and the Philosophical in Twentieth- and Twenty-First-Century American Writing Etymology tells us that “secret” also has to do with lines, since it comes from an Indo-European ro (...) Let’s start from the smallest particle of all, the syllable. It is the king and pin of versification, what rules and holds together the lines, the larger forms, of a poem. … It is by their syllables that words juxtapose in beauty, by these particles of sound as clearly as by the sense of the words which they compose. In any given instance, because there is a choice of words, the choice, if a man is in there, will be, spontaneously, the obedience of his ear to the syllables. … It would do no harm, as an act of correction to both prose and verse as now written, if both rime and meter, and, in the quantity words, both sense and sound, were less in the forefront of the mind than the syllable, if the syllable, that fine creature, were more allowed to lead the harmony on” (Olson 241, ellipses mine). Loved this publication, the juxtaposition of the original letters and how they looked was marvellous and interesting especially as a historian and (aspiring) palaeographer, though I imagine even non-historians find it fascinating. Let’s start from the smallest particle of all, the syllable. It is the king and pin of versificati (...)

Montgomery , Will. The Poetry of Susan Howe: History, Theology, Authority . London: Palgrave MacMillan, 2010.

Poet and artist Jen Bervin understands this tension between past and present, as well as between text and object, better than most. Her own art practice beautifully explores this interplay. Her 2004 book of modified Shakespearean sonnets, Nets, is a classic in the world of erasure poetry, and strips the bard’s famous lines “bare to the nets,” chiseling away at the familiar sentences to reveal surprising new poems. I dwell in Possibility –/A fairer House than Prose –” (J657, Fr466, M233). In a less optimistic pe (...) From 1999-2012 I worked at The MacDowell Colony, the nation’s oldest artist colony, but I've also done time at an arts magazine, a library, an art museum, and a raptor rehabilitation center. In May of 2012 I left MacDowell to pursue writing, speaking, curating, and creative projects full-time. Published by New Directions, the book has the large format of an art book and the different element (...) Awareness of the importance of the opposition between metrical segmentation and semantic segmentation has led some scholars to state the thesis (which I share) according to which the possibility of enjambment constitutes the only criterion for distinguishing poetry from prose. For what is enjambment, if not the opposition of a metrical line to a syntactical limit, or a prosodic pause to a semantic pause? “Poetry” will then be the name given to the discourse in which this opposition is, at least virtually, possible; “prose” will be the name for the discourse in which this opposition cannot take place. (Agamben 109)

Etymology tells us that “secret” also has to do with lines, since it comes from an Indo-European root word meaning “separate, cut off,” also to be found in “harvest” amongst others. One of Susan Howe’s earliest poetry sequences is entitled Secret History of the Dividing Line (Howe, 1996 87-122). Agamben , Giorgio. The End of the Poem . Translated by Daniel Heller-Roazen. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1999. Carpenter” clearly refers to Christ and “sovereign” certainly has a different connotation than “tender”. But why did she use “unsuspecting” in the margin? Is the implication that Jesus doesn’t actually know what is happening? Why the plural? Is it a slip or are there many “Carpenters” depending on the person and the suffering. tender’ is given with the variant “sovereign” but written in the margin up the side of the paper is “unsuspecting carpenters”. I dwell in Possibility –/A fairer House than Prose –” (J657, Fr466, M233). In a less optimistic perspective, they might also be seen as coffin builders.

But not for all of them, as shown by the recent print edition of the complete poems, the third to b (...) Published by New Directions, the book has the large format of an art book and the different elements of its composition keep a fine balance between the visible and the legible, including for instance a “Visual index” classifying the envelopes according to their shapes. Poised on the limit between the two modes, Marta Werner’s transcripts of the facsimile manuscripts suggest how delicate their interactions can be, particularly by giving prominent visibility to the creases, folds and lines dividing the surfaces of the envelopes. And if you care about poetry at all, who wouldn’t jump at the chance for that kind of intimacy? Billy Collins and Archibald MacLeish
certainly would.