from SYNTHESIZING GRAVITY

Radiantly Indefensible

1.

The central thing I want to think about is the mystery of—I want to call it profundity, which seems all wrong for Stevie Smith. But impact seems inadequate.

No, it is inadequate; impact just means that one is struck; profundity means that when one is struck, one sees deep stars. So profundity.

Stevie Smith’s poetry had a profound impact on me, how about that.

I was looking for Stevie Smith, so hard. I turned over libraries and bookstores for years, trying to find her. I didn’t know her name or anything about her; I didn’t know what country she came from or what kind of poetry she would write or that it would have little drawings.

All I could find was not-her. I would find a piece of something here and another one there, but they couldn’t be put together. I mean, in the living; there was always plenty to adore among the immortals. But anybody alive. I was young, and I thought there must be someone; now I wouldn’t assume that. We are occupying such a thin wedge of time, what are the chances?

It seems so unfair, how the heart is.