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Left off on Chapter 1 Translation & Cluster Sentences

Left off on Chapter 2 Arguments

Who shall conceive the horrors of my secret toil as I dabbled among the unhallowed damps of the grave or tortured the living animal to animate the lifeless clay? My limbs now tremble, & my eyes swim with the remembrance, but then a resistless, almost frantic impulse urged me forward, I seemed to have lost all soul or sensation but for this one pursuit.

This strangely are our souls constructed, & by such slight ligaments are we bound to prosperity or ruin…
It was a strong effort of the spirit of good, but it was ineffectual. Destiny was too potent, & her immutable laws had decreed my utter & terrible destruction.

Love how Walt Whitman is described here:
“Except in the hope of better effect, he took up no new subjects, nor altered rhapsodic tenor of his voice here, nor denied any effort of catalog, rhetoric, eroticism, nor trimmed his cadence, nor muted his thunder or sweetness.”

Oliver’s mini biographies and musings about Ralph Waldo Emerson and Edgar Allen Poe make me want to read their works!

Interesting collection of essays so far. Love the way Oliver speaks about Walt Whitman!

And the drops kept coming like offerings in the obedient now. That’s true, you have done all this to yourself. My covers were not constrictors, nor were my walls. My elaborate constructions were built of stencils & explosive devices.

A hissing magnitude comes & un-houses me, only in the hours when I am not who I am at all. For what seems like fifteen minutes I stare at the word, “nests.” It has too many S’s. It’s S heavy. It’s not a place for a bird.

Let go the oxcart. Let go the claw & climb. This fevered mess of world is well-done. Lean in & nuzzle it’s exceptional need to be yours.