The issue of "evidence" that I have been posting about in my recent posts on Simon Armitage is one I began to identify while reading his first book, Zoom! (the subject of those posts). An issue I have been interested in for a long time that I first noticed elsewhere in Armitage's work (in Tyrannosaurus Rex versus the Corduroy Kid, to be precise) is that of the "moment" that becomes the focus of a poem. In "The Bears in Yosemite Park," from Zoom!, the moment that "lyric poetry" as such is interested in is described precisely:
this moment is one which will separate some part
of our lives from another.
What Armitage adds to this theme in the Tyrannosaurus Rex book is a significant complication: such decisive moments may not actually change anything—and they may even change things for the worse.
this moment is one which will separate some part
of our lives from another.
What Armitage adds to this theme in the Tyrannosaurus Rex book is a significant complication: such decisive moments may not actually change anything—and they may even change things for the worse.
2 comments:
Joan Didion, ever the cheery one, starts "The Year of Magical Thinking":
Life changes fast.
Life changes in the instant.
You sit down to dinner and life as you know it ends.
Tough call, whether you'd rather have it change in a moment undreaded or whether you'd rather have a warn curtain give you a chance to steel yourself before the glacier crashes into the bay.
Re-reading this comment as tsunamis spread across the Pacific from Chile ...
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