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.

hardcover

His bastion study fortified with bookcases.

turn it over

The Talmud records that Ben Bag-Bag, a scholar and disciple of Hillel, counseled:
   “Turn it over and turn it over, for all is therein”
The ‘it’ is the Torah, but the same could be said of reading and studying a great poem.

block off the chip

The book I ordered, a study of the fragment in literature, arrived today. Turns out it’s over four-hundred pages.

happening in there

Psychiatry and psychology take the study of emotions seriously, but poetry is the lab of emotions.

kelp diver

He had delved so deeply into the poem that he felt submerged in the text, a diver with the alphabet twisting upward around him like kelp.

singular path

Cut your own idiosyncratic path through literature.

I know (of) it well

There are long poems that are read and there are long poems that have reputations but aren’t read.

flipping through pages

A scholar whose studies could only be described as desultory.