Category Archives: Form and Theory

These are a series of short papers I wrote for Kathleen Peirce’s Form and Theory class in Spring 2006.

The Structure of Rhyme

A response to Louise Bogan’s “The Pleasures of Formal Poetry,” excerpted in Lofty Dogmas. (There’s another response here, that gives more of an idea of her piece; it’s not otherwise available online.) Years ago in college writing workshop a woman … Continue reading

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The Shape of the Shadow

A response to Agnes Martin, “On the Perfection Underlying Life” (excerpted here) The shape of the shadow does not always or even often conform to the shape of the body that throws it. I am thinking of shadows that break … Continue reading

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Notes Towards a State of “Bewilderment”

Response to a talk by Fanny Howe What is the relationship, say, to style, solitude, the daily practice of sitting down to work, is this a question of faith and how does one deal with the simultaneous urge to explain … Continue reading

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Poet as Shark – Response to Plato / Juarroz / “Form”

Where is the heart I am calling? Heart become eyelid of an eye on its way to where I am. The eye is not here yet and already I can see. Before there is a heart I am made of … Continue reading

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Response to Ben Shahn, ‘The Shape of Content’

“This poetry is a picture or graph of a mind moving… My life has been spent in the midst of heroic landscapes which never overwhelmed me and yet I live in a single room in the city – the room … Continue reading

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Response to “The Path of Color” (Matisse) and “Che cos’é la poesia?” (Derrida)

The poem wants to be intimate utterance overheard. Catullus. Bitter, intimate, INTIMATE, repertorial but with the added interest of that, a saying from a listening to, the movement of both implied but not explicit, with no definite direction one way … Continue reading

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Response to the Double Bass and Black as a Color

What the dog wants and what the poem wants are maybe the same thing – to be let out, to eat, to be paid attention to. But various moments have various demands and so often it feels like one is … Continue reading

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