Re-reading Welsh modernist poet David Jones's long poem, The Anathemata. Really something. He can pile on the wildest most obscure baroque language and references, because the narrative-thematic structure is deep, simple and strong. "Make your eye single, and your whole body will be full of light."

My poetry these days is banked by such steep cliffs, it's hard to climb down to the current. May keep the water clean, though.

Seems to be some focus on the Chicago blogs lately (Ange Mlinko's recent post at Harriet, Bob Archambeau at Samizdat) on issues of sensibility vs. knowledge. Relates very much to CT Christ's book Victorian & Modern Poetics (discussed in essay here). Of course, poetry should be where these two things happily merge. These lines from Anathemata brought me up short yesterday :

(For men can but proceed from what they know, nor is it for
the mind of this flesh to practice poiesis, ex nihilo.)