startle title

Don’t use the device of a ‘startle title’ too many times. If you do, you run the risk that many readers won’t read on beyond the title, or that what they do read beyond it seems lesser than its promise.

stages of experience

First the poetry startled you, then it enthralled you, then by study you became aware of its faults and limitations—but still you admired this poetry.

ever restless

If my words aren’t startling, death itself is without rest.

—Tu Fu (712-770 AD), quoted in the introduction to The Selected Poems of Tu Fu (New Directions, 1989), translated by David Hinton.

sound sleeper

Inured by clamor and din, sometimes it is the nearly silent things that startle and wake us.