høle in the skY: a poetics

The word poetics describes literary or artistic styles or theories. Aristotle explored all of its aspects in his book, Poetics: plot, tragedy, diction, language, rhythm, meter.  Just like the sun, the mind works. Understanding sometimes arrives after a long night. The mind makes associations. When I first encountered Kathy McTavish’s title for her new work, høle in The SkY, I had images of eclipse, Chief Hole in the Day, and falling stars.

"Every word is either current, or strange, or metaphorical, or ornamental, or newly-coined, or lengthened, or contracted, or altered," wrote Aristotle. How curious and true, not only generally, but for each poet, even each person. 

Two eclipses occurred recently, a blood moon on April 15 and a solar eclipse on April 29. Eclipses always make people uneasy. Eclipses carry shades of the apocalypse; some Christians think the end-times are imminent. Recent scientific news of climate change seems apocalyptic. Astrologers believe eclipses are significant and portentous. Writers have also been fascinated by the phenomenon: Emily Dickinson, James Fenimore Cooper, Virginia Woolf, Annie Dillard, and Anne Carson have written about the eclipse.

Losing the sun, the center of the universe, even for a few minutes causes deep disturbance. Many events dislodge routines and expectations, and such events trigger writing and art.