language x-ray

To view poetry as the skeleton of prose.

skeleton showing

In traditional Japanese architecture some of the skeleton of the structure is left exposed, and the same is true of a good poem.

skeleton of things

“Words are the skeleton of things and for that reason last longer than things do” is one of the unpublished “greguerias,” or aphorisms, of Spanish writer Ramon Gomez de la Serna, out of the 400 that Prof. Laurie-Anne Laget discovered and has now published in a book.

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Also noted at All Aphorisms, All The Time, James Geary's blog.

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I think I'll go on.

image of note: a rabid fox

I with the sin of despair
for the world my species has spoiled,

the fox for its hunger,
its rabies, its dirty coat
slung over a frail skeleton.

(from the poem "The Ruiner of Lives," by Chase Twichell,
reprinted in Dark Horses: Poets on Overlooked Poems,
edited by Joy Katz and Kevin Prufer, Univ. of Illinois Press, 2007)