In part 4, "Gorgias, or How to Write, Part I" all the first, false starts of writing a prose poem are arranged with autobiographical objects (letters, ephemera, photographs). Inspired by the genre of composition instruction manuals, this section emphasizes language cleaved apart and together. At the limits between fiction and fact, how does one write a memoir of the imagination? Bibliographies, art catalogues, personal correspondence—does genre make a difference if all writing is persuasion; a form of rhetoric? 

 

Keats: "We see nothing but pleasant wonders, and think of delaying there for ever in delight. However, among the effects this breathing is father of, is that tremendous one of sharpening one's vision into the heart and nature of man, of convincing one's nerves that the world is full of misery and heartbreak, pain, sickness, and oppression; whereby this Chamber of Maidenthought becomes gradually darkened, and at the same time, on all sides of it, many doors are set open - but all dark - all leading to dark passages. We see not the balance of good and evil; we are in a mist."






































Please view the second portion of this work, "Gorgias, Or How to Write: II."