Guest Observation: Henry Reed

From “Naming of Parts“:

“They call it easing the Spring: it is perfectly easy
If you have any strength in your thumb: like the bolt,
And the breech, and the cocking-piece, and the point of balance,
Which in our case we have not got; and the almond-blossom
Silent in all of the gardens and the bees going backwards and forwards,
          For to-day we have naming of parts.”

Wonderful poem, which I encountered in a junior college composition class I needed to take to get into Berkeley. Wonderful class, too: the instructor was a poet who lived up in the Richmond hills. I groped, as I often do, for what this poem was saying. Seems pretty obvious now. (And if one wants to read more on Henry Reed, who seems worth the time, here’s a wonderful website dedicated to his work. That’s three “wonderfuls” in the same paragraph. I’m out.)

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