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SOURCE: Perloff, Marjorie. “‘Collision or Collusion with History’: Susan Howe's Articulation of Sound Forms in Time.” In Poetic License: Essays on Modernist and Postmodernist Lyric, pp. 297-310. Evanston, Ill.: Northwestern University Press, 1990.
In the following essay, Perloff perceives Howe's verse as a combination of three elements—the historical, the mythic, the linguistic—and informed by “an urgent, if highly individual, feminist perspective.”
Flocks roost before dark Coveys nestle and settle
Meditation of a world's vast Memory
Predominance pitched across history Collision or collusion with history
—Howe, Articulation
The two words are identical except for a single letter: according to the OED [Oxford English Dictionary], collision means “1. The action of colliding or forcibly striking or dashing together; violent encounter of a moving body with another. 2a. The coming together of sounds with harsh effect. 3. fig. Encounter of opposed ideas, interests, etc. clashing, hostile encounter.” Whereas collusion means “Secret agreement...
This section contains 5,793 words (approx. 20 pages at 300 words per page) |
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