The roses tremble; oh, the sunflower's eye Is opened wide in sad expectancy. Westward and back the circling swallows fly, The rooks' battalions dwind… - Denise Levertov

so many writers and readers, that “deep spiritual longing” Jorie Graham speaks of, seems to underscore the irrelevance to literature, for both writer and reader, of the kind of criticism currently prevalent in the academic world — a criticism which treats works of art as if they were diagrams or merely means provided for the exercise of analysis, rather than what they are: testimonies of lived life, which is what writers have a vocation to give, and readers (including those who write) have a need to receive.

There's in my mind a...
turbulent moon-ridden girl

or old woman, or both,
dressed in opals and rags, feathers

and torn taffeta,
who knows strange songs

but she is not kind.

The poet never must lose despair.