zooming in...

if you haven't yet been exposed to this phenomenal poet, whose own GIFT is to sing into profundity the smallest[yet galacticENORMOUS] observations-- i am SO GLAD that I get to be the one to bring her into your world!

SUSAN KINSOLVING's THE GIFT [below] is just one of manymanymany poems she's written that simultaneously challenge/waken/comfort/enthrall me...



THE GIFT

by Susan Kinsoloving

In red foil paper was my present, just
as I had asked: a magnifying glass. I
was five, but my dismay was huge
intensified by feigned gratitude. What
to say? where was the word of my mistake?
In silence, I enlarged snowflakes,
pine needles, carpet threads, six
crumbs of cake, and the dark pupils
of my dog's eyes. But the word hid
elsewhere, almost disguised, as glass
might be the illusion of clarity. And so
it's been in all my words and hopes:
poems, the elusive gift, the microscope.


this one spoke to me today...its recreation, not simply "recollection" of childhood in the way she uses her words to capture and communicate the sincere confusion of a five-year-old self as it has spilled and crystallized into an adult passion, a life's purpose...

i love the way in which she so beautifully threads together her multisensory images for meaning... from the play with the "magnifying glass" and its "intensif[y]"ication of the "dismay" of a little girl to the twisting of her thoughts around the whole idea of finding VOICE in the piece, and in the speaker's [poet's] existence...moving from "silence" in search of the precisely perfect WORD...i read it optimistically, hopefully, happily...(though perhaps i'm missing the point and this is a frustrated, futile search for this eternally-five year old girl that will never be fulfilled-- your decision here)...

the true WORDS are in the fabric...maybe we just have to look more closely at the fibers...


well, now that you've read MY thoughts on kinsolving, here's a review of a collection "dailies and rushes" that ran in the new york times in 1999...

http://www.nytimes.com/books/99/05/09/reviews/990509.09musket.html