"The world's poetic force (its energy), kept alive within us, fastens itself by fleeting, delicate shivers, onto the rambling pre-science of poetry in the depths of our being. The active violence in reality distracts us from knowing it. Our obligation to "grasp" violence, and often fight it, estranges us from such live intensity, as it also freezes the shiver and disrupts pre-science. But this force never runs dry because it is its own turbulence. Poetry-thus, nonetheless, totality gathering strength-is driven by another poetic dimension that we all divine or babble within ourselves. It could well be that poetry is basically and mainly defined in this relationship of itself to nothing other than itself, of density to volatility, or the whole to the individual. (beginning of "That That")"
Édouard Glissant

January 1, 1970

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Original Language: English

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