A woman made wary by misfortune, writes Stendhal,will not experience this soul-shaking upheaval. Soulshakingupheaval means something like what heelsewhere calls the curse of passionate love, althoughmy sense is that love here is better understood aseither arousal or torpor, and that distinctions in suchmatters are, while necessary and true, ultimatelymythological. Stendhal’s own argument alsoentails a critique of terminology: of thunderbolts,he says, That ridiculous word ought to be changed—but nevertheless the thing “love at first sight” does exist.
When I first copied down those sentences fromStendhal, I wrote instead of upheaval the nonwordunheaval, which I now think of as upheaval’suncompromised sibling. On the ceiling of mygynecologist’s exam room is a watercolor of alurid hummingbird with a few centimeters ofbeak inside a flower. A hummingbird’s beak isunderstood to be a sheath for the bird’s…
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The American Poetry Review (Digital) - 1 Issue, November/December 2018