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Post by louisa on Nov 19, 2008 1:19:45 GMT 2
Song at the Edge of the SeaBy Constance Merritt submitted by Mary Alexandra Agner I love Constance Merritt's poem for the passion with which it takes on both the universe and the human race. It casts a critical eye towards humanity's actions but does refuse their ability to transform or be redeemed. Merrit has taken the sonnet and inverted it and yet still leaves the reader in the wake of an incredible rhyming couplet which simultaneously gives closure and adjures the reader to sing something new. The poem itself sings with all its different levels of repetition, from the loose iambs to the lists. The whole is redolent with hope. Song at the Edge of the Sea The world is complete without us. Intolerable fact. A fact, indeed, but not intolerable. I've seen the world without us and it lacked Nothing, but burned on fierce and beautiful. Or should I say it lacked all things Human: malice, injustice, garbage, greed. The nuclear winters, the silent springs Of our machinations slowly fade With our dark souls into oblivion; The body of the animal alone Remains, open to the vast pavilion Of sky, gathered in at last, at rest, at one. There is life without us; there is song. We learn to sing that we too might belong. More information and latest book: www.lsu.edu/lsupress/bookPages/9780807132586.html
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