Unit 4: Vocabulary from Readings 1

I don’t know how or when,
no they were not voices, they were not
words, nor silence,
but from a street I was summoned

abruptly from the others,
among violent fires
or returning alone,
there I was without a face
and it touched me.

and something started in my soul,
fever or forgotten wings,
and I made my own way,
deciphering
that fire

and suddenly I saw
the heavens
unfastened and open,
planets
palpitating plantations

shadow perforated,
riddled
with arrows, fire, and flowers,
the winding night, the universe.

And I, infinitesimal being,
drunk with the great starry
void,
likeness, image of mystery,
felt myself a pure part
of the abyss

I collect boxes, hats, rusty flattened bottle caps for collages and creek-worn sticks to color with my hoard of Berol prisma color pencils.

When I was a kid I’d lie in bed imagining I was a squirrel who lived in a hollow tree, foraging for acorns, twigs and whatever it takes to make squirrel furniture.

Do you collect anything? Stamps? Shells? ’57 Chevys? Raccoons? Money? Leopards? Meteorites? Wisecracks? What a coincidence, I collect them, too.

Writing one ballad, he said, was like carrying around an armload of words to a table upstairs and wondering if he’d get there in time.

Words taken out of the laborious structures (like this sentence) where we normally place them take on a spinning life of their own.

In high school I idolized e. e. cummings because he was irreverent and made me feel free.

In high school I idolized e. e. cummings because he was irreverent and made me feel free.

His poems are both goofy and profound, soft and sharp at the same time, tender and fierce.

Look closely at your painting and find a detail that seems to express your feeling, perhaps one color or the gesture of someone’s arm.