it's Virgil's birthday, who died saying Burn the Aeneid, it's not perfect.
But perfect meant finished, as it still, sensibly, only can mean. And
only the dullest poems are done. Volume III of Maximus is the greatest by
far, where the man got away from the picturesque and the patriotic into
the action of language, fully. Fully. As much as Zukofsky did with 80
Flowers.
And if the action of language _always_ opens the door to the work of the
reader, the role of the reader, the intercepter (not the interpreter),
then so much richer the gift, a dromenon for the world, a thing to do,
a path to walk.
Thank God a poem is something to do, not a mute collectible.
Robert
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