from poetry expect poetry

How little divides us finally from Longinus and his classic work on the sublime, written in the early years of our era. The literary encyclopedia reminds us that the sublime is not a formal feature of a work and can’t be defined by way of rhetorical categories. It is instead “a spark that leaps from the soul of the writer to the soul of the reader.” Has so much really changed? Don’t we still wait greedily for that spark?

Surely we don’t go to poetry for sarcasm or irony, for critical distance, learned dialectics or clever jokes. These worthy qualities and forms perform splendidly in their proper place—in an essay, a scholarly tract, a broadside in an opposition newspaper. In poetry, though, we seek the vision, the fire, the flame that accompanies spiritual revelation. In short, from poetry we expect poetry.

—Adam Zagajewski, title essay, A Defense of Ardor (FSG, 2002), translated by Clare Cavanaugh

kindling

Unable to raise a flame from the kindling of the first few lines.