Punk’s Reviews > Synthesizing Gravity: Selected Prose > Status Update

Ryan: "I love the picture of the pointing finger: I love to study it. I don't even care what it's pointing toward. I don't look where the finger instructs me to look. I look at the finger."

Which immediately brought to mind: "Remember that haiku is a finger pointing at the moon, and if the hand is bejeweled, we no longer see that to which it points." A quote I've seen attributed to James W. Hackett and RH Blyth.

"And that is one of the particular beauties of poetry as opposed to, say, the novel. A poem really has no beginning and end, although it does appear to. All parts of a poem exist as a sort of plasma, simultaneously apprehended, existing in the mind all at once, as soon as we have become familiar with them."

"Probity" count: 3

"Nonsense exists only in relation to sense. It uses the rules of sense but comes to different conclusions."

In his introduction, the editor calls this book "a triumph." I'm sorry, sir, I think you mean the work is a triumph; the book is something you made by putting Ryan's work into an order you refuse to disclose.

Reread! I intentionally ordered a used copy of this so I wouldn't feel bad about underlining all my favorite parts, but this withdrawn copy from the Denver Public Library looks like no one ever read it! Will I be able to write in a near mint book? Woof, I guess we'll see.

"To my mind, poets should discourage the practice of poetry, by example."

"A poem really has no beginning and end, although it does appear to. All the parts of a poem exist as a sort of plasma, simultaneously apprehended, existing in the mind all at once, as soon as we have become familiar with them."

Might have to read some Annie Dillard now. Recs?

Bounced hard off the two Marianne Moore essays, though I can see her influence on Ryan's own poetry.