Abstract
The flower’s bloom, thrust high above the ground by an impossibly thin stalk, sways lightly in the wind. Its petals are filmy, almost transparent; its stamens release an invisible dust of pollen. Perhaps a butterfly alights on the flower; its near weightlessness is in perfect proportion to the flower’s rarity.
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Notes
“Die Rosenschale” in Rainer Maria Rilke, Werke (Frankfurt am Main: Insel Verlag, 1980), vol. 2, 309.
Wallace Stevens, “Le Monocle de Mon Oncle” in Collected Poetry and Prose ( New York: The Library of America, 1997 ), 14.
William Wordsworth, “Lines Written in Early Spring” in William Wordsworth: The Oxford Authors, ed. Stephen Gill (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1988 ), 80.
Immanuel Kant, Critique of Judgment, trans. Werner S. Pluhar (Indianapolis: Hackett, 1987), § 16.
Glyn Maxwell, On Poetry ( Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2013 ), 19.
Walt Whitman, “Song of Myself” in Leaves of Grass, Second Edition. Norton Critical Editions, ed. Michael Moon (New York: Norton 2002 ), 77.
Maurice Blanchot, The Infinite Conversation, trans. Susan Hanson (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1993 ), 27.
Alain Badiou, “What Does the Poem Think” in The Age of the Poets, trans. Bruno Bosteels (London: Verso, 2014 ), 31.
Simone Weil, Waiting for God, trans. Emma Craufurd (New York: Perennial Classics, 2001 ), 64.
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© 2016 Harold Schweizer
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Schweizer, H. (2016). Introduction. In: Rarity and the Poetic: The Gesture of Small Flowers. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-137-58929-3_1
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