"hand over hungry hand"
Garcia, Ní Chuilleanáin, Clifton, Jensen, Hirshfield
Richard Garcia:
Eiléan Ní Chuilleanáin:
Lucille Clifton:
The Sharpener is a reader-supported newsletter. If you get value from these newsletters and want to support my work I encourage you to take out a paid subscription.
Laura Jensen:
Jane Hirshfield:
Eric Andre / Hannibal Burress, “The Invention of Ladders”
About Sean Singer
Sean Singer Editorial Services
Subscribe to The Sharpener
The paid-subscriber version of The Sharpener includes weekly installments of craft pieces, approaches to writing problems, topics in contemporary publishing for writers, and biographical features on poets I consider important.
I love Garcia's "First the people had to invent ladders" and Hirschfield's "invented by others, received by others" because both gesture toward *the making* form and function. A close quote from TVF Brogan is "poetry is neither psychology nor etymology, and yet goes in hand with both. But ultimately is poetry is a poiesis." The act of invention is the site of imagination, creativity, and potential. To me this provides an ontological perspective of the writing process. In addition, I recently responded to this in another set of poems, but I love poems that have measurements in them because they are grounding. I've enjoyed reflecting on these poems.