WOMEN ON THE VERGE

Reading Annie Dillard’s
The Writing Life
I was reminded of the willful
Doctrinaire, prescriptive and 
Didactic Simone Weil.

Dillard is incredibly
Hard on herself, Weil on herself
And others. Both characters are 
Shaped by the Self-Crucifixion
They suffer for their Art. 

They share the soul struggle 
Of putting Words on paper.
But Weil recognized that
The beauty of the world 
Is not an attribute of matter itself. 

It is a relationship between the world
And a sensibility that stems
From our body and soul:
What we experience of its beauty
Is destined for our human sensibility….

She is fed by the foment of the 1930’s 
Dillard by the natural surroundings
Of cabins on the shores of 
Cape Cod, Puget Sound and 
The banks of Tinker’s Creek. 

The imagined kinship between
A Marxist, mystic and soldier
And a literary Romantic is sparked
By the extreme rectitude which they
Impose on themselves…

And the struggle to express
Their profound connection
To a fragile world that for both
Is tantalizingly liminal 
And gloriously present.