Style is a very simple matter; it is all rhythm. Once you get that you can’t use the wrong words. But on the other hand, here I am sitting after half the morning, crammed with ideas, with visions, and so on, and can’t dislodge them, for lack of the right rhythm. Now this is very profound, what rhythm is, and goes far deeper than words. A sight, an emotion, creates this wave in the mind, long before it makes words to fit it.
—Virginia Woolf, letter to Vita Sackville-West (with thanks to Sven Birkerts, who quoted it in his Editor's Note, “The Dream of the Ring,” for Agni 101)
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I'm a poet and essayist. I write about poetry, writing, and translation; gender and sexuality; Jewish identity and culture; and the politics of higher education.
