5 Comments

Oh...gosh, I'm going to have to spend some time with this one...

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“The writer’s challenge, of course, is not necessarily to conceive new ideas, but to make something new of the perennial ones” - love this thought. Loved the poem!

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The opening line is very reminiscent of Ecc 1:8, but the poem moves in a very different direction.

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Such an intriguing association -- I don't if it was conscious on her part, but her ending would also seem to obversely echo Qohelet's concluding thoughts -- "Until the silver cord is snapped, and the golden bowl is smashed, and the pitcher is broken at the well, and the jug smashed at the pit.' (Robert Alter's translation)

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It's a balancing act to avoid spilling one drop. When I re-read the poem, I saw "nor" and "no" woven through it, and "only", "ever" , and "enough". I started to say "spilling one drop of life", but the life isn't anybody's to hold or spill; it's the experience/experiencing of it. There's one small "stillborn" in there, which I took as regret and a warning not to hold back.

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