I started a different kind of learning just recently. It wasn’t the usual seminar course, nor was it on an area I’m familiar with, neither historical or philosophical.
It was a workshop, and began with a reading of Emiliy Dickinson’s “I Dwell in Possibility – ” (from poetryfoundation.com)
The opening:
I dwell in Possibility –
A fairer House than Prose –
More numerous of Windows –
Superior – for Doors –
Of Chambers as the Cedars –
Impregnable of eye –
This is only the second poem I’ve “read”, with the first being Rilke’s Washing the corpse.
The first two lines, it seems to me, leaves everything else redundant. “I dwell in possibility -“, is suspended in mid-thought, before the claims of the writing of everydayness, the prosaic, is envisioned to be less than something else that is barely alluded to.
Poetry (?) is a looking through windows, even if this is already (window) framed, into the what knows whom. In this regard, poetry outwits the everydayness of writing and their doors, which are impregnable to the eye as it seeks infinity. That kind of seeing is enclosed, as in a chamber, and sight is funneled to the Heavens, “the Gambrels of the Sky”.
Poetry sees through windows, its sight moves laterally, with a depth of vision, seeing afar, while cognizant of its frames.
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