{"id":167889,"date":"2024-06-25T10:34:31","date_gmt":"2024-06-25T14:34:31","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/?p=167889"},"modified":"2024-06-25T16:44:22","modified_gmt":"2024-06-25T20:44:22","slug":"on-wonder","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2024\/06\/25\/on-wonder\/","title":{"rendered":"On Wonder"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Claude Mellan (French, Abbeville 1598\u20131688 Paris), The Moon in Its First Quarter<\/a><\/em>, 1635. The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York. From the Elisha Whittelsey Collection, courtesy of the the Elisha Whittelsey Fund.<\/p><\/div>\n

I. The World Worlds<\/strong><\/p>\n

It\u2019s probably not the most promising beginning to this talk for me to observe that my subject, like silence, has a way of disappearing the moment you speak of it. Love, anger, regret, even boredom\u2014wonder\u2019s antipodes\u2014may entrench themselves in us more deeply over time, but wonder, I\u2019d venture, is always already a fugitive affair. Maybe it\u2019s a matter of developmental psychology; in the middle of life, I find myself becoming a nostalgist of childhood wonder. (These days I feel it mostly in my dreams.) Or maybe it\u2019s civilization itself that\u2019s outgrown its wonder years. We start out with the marvels of the ancient world\u2014the Great Pyramid of Giza, the Hanging Gardens of Babylon, the Colossus of Rhodes\u2014only to arrive, in our disenchanted era, at Wonder Bread. Any way you slice it, wonder is ever vanishing. Still, I suspect the occasional sighting of this endangered affect has something to do with why someone like me continues to write poems in the twilight of the Anthropocene. Of course, William Wordsworth said all this more eloquently and in pentameter verse, too. Maybe poetry is a faint trace of wonder in linguistic form. By following that trace for the next hour or so, I hope we\u2019ll come a bit closer to wonder itself.<\/p>\n

Let\u2019s begin with an early wonder of the Western literary tradition. In Book 18 of the Iliad<\/em>, the god Hephaestus forges a shield for Achilles, who\u2019s lost his armor in the bloody fog of war. But as Hephaestus works the shield\u2019s surface, this peculiar blacksmith\u2014being a god, after all\u2014simply can\u2019t resist creating a world, too:<\/p>\n

\n

There he made the earth and there the sky and the sea<\/p>\n

and the inexhaustible blazing sun and the moon rounding full<\/p>\n

and there the constellations, all that crown the heavens<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

A little creation myth blossoms amid the slaughter, as Hephaestus hammers not only Earth but\u2014within the brief passage of three dactylic hexameters\u2014the totality of the known cosmos onto the shield as well. And he\u2019s only just getting warmed up, really. Over the next 150 lines of the poem, Hephaestus emblazons the shield\u2019s surface with a compact survey of ancient civilization, including the arts of war, law, agriculture, animal husbandry, astronomy, music, dance, and so on. A sensualist at heart, he sets this panorama buzzing all over with Epicurean minutiae: we see \u201cbunches of lustrous grapes in gold, ripening deep purple\u201d; we hear a boy plucking his lyre, \u201cso clear it could break the heart with longing\u201d; we even taste the savor of \u201ca cup of honeyed, mellow wine.\u201d Not bad for a piece of antiquated military equipment. Faced with such artistry, I can\u2019t help thinking of the shield\u2019s disabled maker as a kind of poet, like the blind Homer himself. Sure enough, Hephaestus incorporates a miniature epic into the shield\u2019s pageantry, too, with its own besieged city, fraught war councils, interfering gods, and loved ones watching anxiously from the ramparts as a tiny surrogate Hector is hauled \u201cthrough the slaughter by the heels.\u201d No wonder Homer describes the shield as \u201ca world of gorgeous immortal work.\u201d It contains an entire Iliad<\/em> and more within its gilt compass.<\/p>\n

Beguiled by Homer\u2019s art, some readers have even tried to reverse engineer real shields from this literary blueprint over the millennia. Probably the most spectacular example of all time was fabricated for display at George IV\u2019s coronation banquet by the sculptor, draftsman, and Homer enthusiast John Flaxman in 1821. It\u2019s a marvel of nineteenth-century British punctiliousness in low relief.<\/p>\n

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The Shield of Achilles designed by John Flaxman and cast by Rundell & Bridge.<\/p><\/div>\n

Here we find bunches of lustrous grapes in gold, a boy with his lyre, and that cup of honeyed wine\u2014all meticulously accounted for. And yet I can\u2019t help feeling this luminous artifact offers, at best, only a low-resolution copy of the Homeric original. Let\u2019s zoom in for a moment on those golden hounds at their masters\u2019 feet to have a closer look.<\/p>\n

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I\u2019m not sure why Homer enumerates the figures in this little tableau with such exactitude amid all the shield\u2019s armies, crowds, and processions\u2014\u201cand the golden drovers kept the herd in line, \/ four in all, with nine dogs at their heels\u201d\u2014but it offers us a perfect opportunity to check Flaxman\u2019s work for quality control. Four drovers? Check. Now let\u2019s count the dogs. (You might think I\u2019m being persnickety here, and with good reason, but bear with me just a little longer.) So where is that ninth hound? Marianne Moore once famously claimed that \u201comissions are not accidents.\u201d It\u2019s hard to say whether Flaxman\u2019s missing hound is an omission or an accident, but it makes me wonder.<\/p>\n

Listen carefully, and you\u2019ll hear the poor beast\u2014\u201cbarking, cringing away\u201d\u2014somewhere in the vaporous limbo between fiction and reality. \u201cPaws flickering,\u201d it\u2019s a creaturely cipher for what\u2019s lost when we translate the virtual into the real. The former U.S. Army cryptographer and Homer enthusiast Cy Twombly illustrates this loss in oil, crayon, and graphite in his postmodern Shield of Achilles<\/em> a century and a half later.<\/p>\n

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Shield of Achilles<\/em> by Cy Twombly, courtesy of the Philadelphia Museum of Art: Gift (by exchange) of Samuel S. White 3rd and Vera White, 1989, 1989\u201390\u20131. Courtesy of the Cy Twombly Foundation.<\/p><\/div>\n

You won\u2019t find our missing hound here, either\u2014and that\u2019s the whole point of Twombly\u2019s abstraction. All those kinetic scribbles convey Homer\u2019s energeia<\/em>, or literary energy, but they also make an absolute hash of the shield\u2019s pictorial imagery. Not even a cryptographer can code so much world into so small a space. Whether you reconstruct it like Flaxman or deconstruct it like Twombly, the shield of Achilles will forever remain an impossible object. It belongs to that wondrous category of things that are larger inside than outside, like a poem, or a person, or a world. \u201cThe world is not the mere collection of the countable or uncountable, familiar and unfamiliar things that are at hand,\u201d writes Martin Heidegger in The Origin of the Work of Art<\/em>, \u201cbut neither is it a merely imagined framework added by our representation to the sum of such given things. The world worlds.\u201d Homer\u2019s shield isn\u2019t a picture of all the countable or uncountable things\u2014star systems, ripening grape clusters, flickering hounds\u2014that populate the world. As Flaxman and Twombly discovered, it can\u2019t even be pictured at all. But it worlds.<\/p>\n

\u201cGlorious armor shall be his, armor \/ that any man in the world of men will marvel at \/ through all the years to come,\u201d Hephaestus predicts as he hammers the glowing cosmos on his forge. If you were to survey the readers\u2019 responses to this literary marvel over the millennia\u2014from the anonymous commentators of antiquity to moderns like Alexander Pope and G. E. Lessing to undergraduate term papers in Humanities 101\u2014you\u2019d end up with something like a brief history of wonder in Western civilization. Describing the plowmen at work on the shield\u2019s figured surface, Homer himself is the first among mortals to express wonder at its construction:<\/p>\n

\n

And the earth churned black behind them, like earth churning,<\/p>\n

solid gold as it was\u2014that was the wonder of Hephaestus\u2019 work.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

I can\u2019t imagine a more gorgeous description of humanity\u2019s passage through the dark field of world: \u201cthe earth churned black behind them, like earth churning.\u201d But why doesn\u2019t Homer say the shield\u2019s golden surface<\/em> churned like earth churning? This M\u00f6bius strip of a simile is a marvel in its own right. Spellbound by Hephaestus\u2019s artistry, we forget the shield\u2019s a shield in the first place\u2014so we feel we\u2019re watching soil behave \u201clike\u201d itself. It\u2019s a kind of reverse alchemy, where gold becomes dirt, vehicle becomes tenor, and shield becomes world. Sometimes it seems there\u2019s no escaping wonder before such worlding work. Of the golden women depicted in the shield\u2019s wedding procession, Homer writes, \u201cEach stood moved with wonder.\u201d I\u2019m not sure whether we should envy or pity these embossed figures, forever frozen in transport at the wonder they inhabit.<\/p>\n

But there\u2019s a serious glitch in the god\u2019s plans for this \u201cworld of gorgeous immortal work.\u201d Though Hephaestus prophesies that \u201cany man in the world of men will marvel\u201d at his craft, none of the many men in the Iliad<\/em>\u2014Trojan or Greek\u2014ever marvel at the shield\u2019s construction. Achilles\u2019s fellow soldiers won\u2019t even look at the god\u2019s radiant work: \u201cnone dared \/ to look straight at the glare, each fighter shrank away.\u201d Only a blind genius could invent such tragic optics. Homer embeds a gilded cosmos in the midst of the epic for his readers to marvel at through the ages, but the Iliad<\/em>\u2019s inhabitants remain forever blind to this wonder hidden in plain view. Beholding his gift from the gods, even Achilles\u2014the only mortal who scrutinizes the shield\u2019s figured surface\u2014fails to wonder at the sight:<\/p>\n

\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 The more he gazed, the deeper his anger went,<\/p>\n

his eyes flashing under his eyelids, fierce as fire\u2014<\/p>\n

exulting, holding the god\u2019s shining gifts in his hands.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Rage<\/em> (m<\/em>\u0113<\/em>nis<\/em>) is the first word of the Iliad<\/em>, and we usually associate it with blindness rather than perception: \u201cI was blinded, lost in my inhuman rage,\u201d says Agamemnon during one of his many changes of heart in the poem. But Homer envisions something like a phenomenology of rage in this scene: \u201cThe more he gazed, the deeper his anger went.\u201d For Achilles, anger is more than affect\u2014it\u2019s an adjunct of perception itself. Only once he\u2019s \u201cthrilled his heart with looking hard \/ at the armor\u2019s well-wrought beauty\u201d does he break off his furious gaze. Instead of blinding him, rage furnishes this exceptional character with a singular perspective on things.<\/p>\n

Why does Achilles alone rage at this \u201cworld of gorgeous immortal work\u201d? It may have something to do with his sense of vocation. In Book 9 of the Iliad<\/em>, we find him in his tent, \u201cplucking strong and clear on the fine lyre\u201d he won in battle long ago, \u201csinging the famous deeds of fighting heroes.\u201d I can\u2019t help feeling this armchair bard would have made a passable poet in a different world. (Isn\u2019t every poet a sulky egotist with a hyperactive death drive, after all?) But Achilles is born to fight, not to sing. Anything that comes between him and his bloody vocation\u2014including the \u201cbeautifully carved\u201d lyre, \u201cits silver bridge set firm\u201d\u2014must be cast aside for him to follow this calling. Not even life itself matters more to him than this grim occupation. \u201cHard on the heels of Hector\u2019s death your death \/ must come at once,\u201d his mother warns him, but Achilles only retorts, \u201cThen let me die at once.\u201d What\u2019s the point of living if you can no longer kill? Achilles doesn\u2019t work to live, he lives to work\u2014Homer uses the word ergon<\/em>, which means something like \u201clabor,\u201d to describe the hero\u2019s exertions on the battlefield\u2014and his business is death.<\/p>\n

Wonder, for the Greeks, led to a very different sort of vocation. We see this illustrated in a scene from Plato\u2019s Theaetetus<\/em>, where Socrates plays his customary role of career counselor to a youth he\u2019s interrogated to the point of utter perplexity:<\/p>\n

\n

Theaetetus: By the gods, Socrates, I am lost in wonder when I think of all these things, and sometimes when I regard them it really makes my head swim.<\/p>\n

Socrates: It seems that Theodorus was not far from the truth when he guessed what kind of person you are. For this is an experience which is characteristic of a philosopher, this wondering [thaumazein<\/em>]: this is where philosophy begins and nowhere else.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Funny how Theaetetus must first become \u201clost in wonder\u201d in order to find himself. He learns \u201cwhat kind of person\u201d he is\u2014a philosopher\u2014from his brush with thaumazein<\/em>. This beats any aptitude test I took in high school. For Plato, wonder \u201cis where philosophy begins and nowhere else.\u201d No wonder, no philosophers. Even Aristotle, who built a whole philosophical system from his lover\u2019s quarrel with Plato, agrees on this point. \u201cIt is through wonder that men now begin and originally began to philosophize,\u201d he observes in the Metaphysics<\/em>, \u201cwondering in the first place at obvious perplexities, and then by gradual progression raising questions about the greater matters too, e.g. about the changes of the moon and of the sun, about the stars and about the origin of the universe.\u201d If this sounds familiar, it\u2019s because we\u2019ve come full circle, to the origin of the cosmos\u2014the earth, the stars, \u201cthe inexhaustible blazing sun and the moon rounding full\u201d\u2014that Hephaestus hammered onto the shield\u2019s bright circumference in the first place. But we\u2019ve yet to consider those \u201cgreater matters\u201d that form the astronomical rungs on the ladder of Aristotle\u2019s ascent into thaumazein<\/em>\u2014the moon, the sun, the stars, and the origin of the universe. Let\u2019s take the next step in wonder\u2019s philosophical progression and look to the moon.<\/p>\n

II. Worlds Beyond<\/strong><\/p>\n

Sooner or later, the moon pops up on pretty much every poet\u2019s literary horizon. Whether you\u2019re a Japanese courtesan, a Yoruban folk singer, or a Conceptualist cosmonaut, it\u2019s as close as the art comes to a timeless universal motif. But how many poets ever make the moon feel new in their art? Nearly 350 years ago, John Milton managed to work a nifty little lunar renovation into the epic paraphernalia of Paradise Lost<\/em>, as the irrepressible Satan\u2014after nine days and nights in free fall from the battlefield of heaven\u2014takes up arms once again:<\/p>\n

\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 His ponderous shield,<\/p>\n

Ethereal temper, massy, large and round,<\/p>\n

Behind him cast. The broad circumference<\/p>\n

Hung on his shoulders like the moon whose orb<\/p>\n

Through optic glass the Tuscan artist views<\/p>\n

At evening from the top of Fesol\u00e8,<\/p>\n

Or in Valdarno to descry new lands,<\/p>\n

Rivers or mountains in her spotty globe.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Even the most pious poet can\u2019t resist a bit of literary vandalism now and then. Emblazoning the full moon on Satan\u2019s shield, Milton blots out the classical world of Achilles\u2019s shield\u2014just as Paradise Lost<\/em> will, he hopes, eclipse the Iliad<\/em> in the annals of literary history someday. \u201cMassy\u201d yet also \u201cethereal [in] temper,\u201d Satan\u2019s shield is another kind of impossible object, or hyperobject. It belongs to that wondrous category of things that hold dual citizenship in the realms of the material and the ideal, like a poem, or an angel, or the venerable moon itself. Since antiquity, astronomers had speculated about the moon\u2019s ontology\u2014was it composed of ethereal vapors, or massy like the earth?\u2014until Milton\u2019s \u201cTuscan artist\u201d put these theories to the proof with the aid of his \u201coptic glass.\u201d Oddly, we don\u2019t really see much of the moon on Satan\u2019s shield. Superimposed on its \u201cspotty globe,\u201d we find a portrait of Galileo Galilei\u2014the man in Milton\u2019s moon\u2014who, more than any poet or rebel angel, revolutionized our view of the heavens above.<\/p>\n

Milton visited Galileo\u2014by then old, blind, and under house arrest\u2014in Florence during the summer of 1638. (DreamWorks has been sitting on my script of this story for ages.) In his book The Starry Messenger<\/em>, Galileo had published the first topographical drawings of the moon\u2019s surface to appear in the West nearly three decades earlier.<\/p>\n

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Galileo\u2019s moon sketch. Courtesy of Linda Hall Library of Science, Engineering & Technology.<\/p><\/div>\n

Peering through his telescope, the Florentine astronomer marveled at a cratered and mountainous terrain that defied expectation:<\/p>\n

\n

The surface of the Moon is not even, smooth and perfectly spherical, as the majority of philosophers have conjectured that it and the other celestial bodies are but, on the contrary, rough and uneven, and covered with cavities and protuberances just like the face of the Earth, which is rendered diverse by lofty mountains and deep valleys.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Galileo discovered that the moon, too, was a world, \u201cjust like\u201d ours. Look closely at that progression of topological nouns ending Milton\u2019s lines, and you\u2019ll see how the moon came of age as a world in this period\u2014from a flat \u201ccircumference\u201d to a volumetric \u201corb\u201d to a mapmaker\u2019s \u201cglobe.\u201d In Galileo\u2019s wake, the French engraver Claude Mellan\u2019s moon maps would soon highlight the chiaroscuro curvature of the lunar orb.<\/p>\n

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Three representations of the moon by Claude Mellan, courtesy of The Elisha Whittelsey Collection, The Elisha Whittelsey Fund, 1960.<\/p><\/div>\n

By the end of the eighteenth century, the moon had assumed world-like dimensions in the British artist John Russell\u2019s aureate globe.<\/p>\n

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Moon globe by John Russell.<\/p><\/div>\n

All this time, Earth was yielding its last blank spots\u2014known as sleeping beauties\u2014to the epistemological imperium of geography. But now another \u201cspotty globe\u201d offered \u201cnew lands, \/ Rivers or mountains\u201d to be mapped\u2014and the moon was only the beginning.<\/p>\n

The moon on Satan\u2019s shield heralds a revolution in the history of cosmological wonder. Galileo\u2019s telescope revealed a host of worlds in the heavens above\u2014new moons circling Jupiter, stars never before seen by the human eye\u2014all swiftly incorporated into blind Milton\u2019s literary vision of the cosmos. Paradise Lost<\/em> stages a universal masque of wonder beneath this canopy of plural worlds. Awestruck, Adam delivers a Hamletic soliloquy on outer space, which makes of \u201cthis earth a spot, a grain, \/ An atom with the firmament compared \/ And all her numbered stars that seem to roll \/ Spaces incomprehensible.\u201d Milton himself wonders if God might \u201cordain \/ His dark materials to create more worlds\u201d from chaos someday. Satan, too, plays the amateur cosmologist, speculating that \u201cspace may produce new worlds\u201d for his legions to invade following their expulsion from the kingdom of heaven. If you find Paradise Lost<\/em> slow going, try reading it as science fiction. (Spielberg, what are you waiting for?) Nebulous monsters wing their way through star systems. Angels and demons alike imagine humans colonizing other planets. For the first time in English poetry, we view Earth from outer space\u2014\u201cthat globe whose hither side \/ With light from hence though but reflected shines\u201d\u2014half cloaked in brightness, half in shadow. I could go on. But amid all this, the archangel Raphael warns Adam\u2014and, consequently, Star Trek<\/em> aficionados everywhere\u2014to \u201cdream not of other worlds, what creatures there \/ Live in what state, condition or degree.\u201d Maybe wonder, like the moon, has a dark side.<\/p>\n

Let\u2019s not forget that the most wonderstruck character in Paradise Lost<\/em> also happens to be the most fiendish by far. Unlike furious Achilles, Satan simply can\u2019t stop mooning over all of creation. From the stairway to heaven, he \u201clooks down with wonder\u201d at Earth below; once he\u2019s touched down on our planet, he gazes upon Eden \u201cwith new wonder\u201d; when he first sees Adam and Eve, he\u2019s overcome by \u201cwonder and could love\u201d them, too. Such vulnerability to wonder, on Satan\u2019s part, is frankly endearing. I, for one, can\u2019t help feeling sympathy for the poor devil when we last see him\u2014at the conclusion of his final speech to the rebel angels in hell\u2014still wondering to the bitter end:<\/p>\n

\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 He stood expecting<\/p>\n

Their universal shout and high applause<\/p>\n

To fill his ear when c\u00f3ntrary he hears<\/p>\n

On all sides from innumerable tongues<\/p>\n

A dismal universal hiss, the sound<\/p>\n

Of public scorn. He wondered but not long<\/p>\n

Had leisure, wond\u2019ring at himself now more:<\/p>\n

His visage drawn he felt to sharp and spare,<\/p>\n

His arms clung to his ribs, his legs entwining<\/p>\n

Each other till supplanted down he fell<\/p>\n

A monstrous serpent on his belly prone<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

I\u2019ve felt this way after poetry readings myself sometimes. (Isn\u2019t every poet a narcissistic angel in reptilian form, after all?) Satan\u2019s ultimate object of wonder in Paradise Lost<\/em> isn\u2019t a newly discovered planet, or humankind, but \u201chimself,\u201d transformed into a serpent. You\u2019d expect Satan to feel horror at this grotesque Ovidian metamorphosis\u2014his cranium warping hideously, his arms fusing into his torso, his legs corkscrewing into a scaly tail\u2014but this antihero\u2019s wondrous journey through the cosmos ends where it began, in a failure to see himself for what he really is. Maybe dreaming too much of worlds beyond reach can make a monster of you.<\/p>\n

Worlds swim through Paradise Lost<\/em> like bubbles in a glass of champagne, but Milton cautions us not to lose sight of ourselves in this teeming universe. Who\u2019s more blind to our world than the astronomer squinting into his telescope\u2019s eyepiece? \u201cThey can foresee a future eclipse of the sun,\u201d writes Augustine in his Confessions<\/em>, \u201cbut [they] do not perceive their own eclipse in the present.\u201d I suspect Milton had this sort of inner eclipse in mind when he described Satan\u2019s dusky radiance following the archangel\u2019s fall from heaven:<\/p>\n

\n

His form had not yet lost<\/p>\n

All her original brightness nor appeared<\/p>\n

Less than archangel ruined and th\u2019 excess<\/p>\n

Of glory obscured, as when the sun, new ris\u2019n,<\/p>\n

Looks through the horizontal misty air<\/p>\n

Shorn of his beams or from behind the moon<\/p>\n

In dim eclipse disastrous twilight sheds<\/p>\n

On half the nations and with fear of change<\/p>\n

Perplexes monarchs. Darkened so, yet shone<\/p>\n

Above them all th\u2019 archangel<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Milton\u2019s selenographic shield may advertise Galileo\u2019s discoveries, but its spotty globe also reminds us that Lucifer\u2014the erstwhile \u201cbringer of light\u201d\u2014is, in truth, eclipse personified: \u201cDarkened so, yet shone \/ Above them all th\u2019 archangel.\u201d Nothing discloses the dark side of wonder like an eclipse. I once saw one, through a piece of welder\u2019s glass, in a derelict park on the other side of the world. Even the crows seemed perplexed by its disastrous twilight. There was an uncanny chill, as if a refrigerator door had swung open inside me. But the wonder of it all wasn\u2019t that the sun had been blotted out overhead. What stopped my breath was the slow silhouette of another world gliding into view.<\/p>\n

III. Worlds Within<\/strong><\/p>\n

Three centuries after Paradise Lost<\/em> first lit up the Western literary firmament, an American poet, cookbook author, and marijuana enthusiast named Ronald Johnson purchased an 1892 edition of Milton\u2019s poem in a Seattle bookshop\u2014and promptly began to black out most of the text from its pages.<\/p>\n

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Image courtesy of the Ronald Johnson Collection, Kenneth Spencer Research Library, University of Kansas. Used with permission of the Literary Estate of Ronald Johnson.<\/p><\/div>\n

Why would anyone so meticulously deface an already outdated copy of the venerable Puritan epic? \u201cI got about halfway through it, kind of as a joke,\u201d Johnson later explained in an interview, like a sheepish delinquent caught spray-painting a cathedral. \u201cBut I decided you don\u2019t tamper with Milton to be funny. You have to be serious.\u201d What began as a little joke at Milton\u2019s expense developed into a postmodernist masterpiece of literary eclipse in its own right. Blot out the first and last two letters of paradise<\/em>, and you have radi<\/em>. Lose the first and last letters of lost<\/em>, and you have os<\/em>. Even the title of the poem Johnson fashioned from this procedure\u2014Radi Os<\/em>\u2014is ordained solely from Milton\u2019s dark materials.<\/p>\n

Before publishing this literary curio, Johnson scrupulously whitewashed the epic he\u2019d defaced, yielding a photographic negative of his poetic eclipse:<\/p>\n

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Image courtesy of the Ronald Johnson Collection, Kenneth Spencer Research Library, University of Kansas. Used with permission of the Literary Estate of Ronald Johnson.<\/p><\/div>\n

Nobody wrote Radi Os<\/em>. The poem was wondrously erased into existence. Its author\u2019s words are nowhere to be found in this work, and yet\u2014like Milton\u2019s Creator\u2014he\u2019s everywhere.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere is another world,\u201d the French poet Paul \u00c9luard once said, \u201cbut it is inside this one.\u201d I think Johnson would gently amend this to say there are other worlds<\/em>, but they are inside this one. Turning the astronomical theater of Paradise Lost<\/em> inside out, Johnson investigates the plurality of worlds within: \u201cworlds, \/ That both in him and all things, \/ drive \/ deepest.\u201d A little textual puzzle from ARK<\/em>, the cosmological epic Johnson labored over for twenty years, illustrates the wondrous multiplication of inner worlds throughout this poet\u2019s work:<\/p>\n

\n

earthearthearth<\/p>\n

earthearthearth<\/p>\n

earthearthearth<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

The literary critic Stephanie Burt has deciphered the secret messages embedded in this triple-decker concrete poem. Earth, earth, earth. Ear, the art hearth. Hear the art, hear the art. Sampling a jeremiad from the King James Bible\u2014\u201cO earth, earth, earth, hear the word of the Lord\u201d\u2014Johnson composes a manifold matrix of worlds (and hearts). It\u2019s one thing to register the verse<\/em> in universe<\/em> and another entirely to construct a poetics of the multiverse. The erasurist\u2019s decision not to delete the s<\/em> that pluralizes his book\u2019s title makes worlds of this difference. Radi Os<\/em> isn\u2019t a radio; it\u2019s an orchestra of radios. Well, that\u2019s not quite right. See that caesura fracturing the poem\u2019s title? An imaginary number of broken \u201cradi os\u201d hums and buzzes inside this literary hyperobject. One radio may tune into a single frequency at a time, but a chorus of broken radios can broadcast everything from an infernal racket to the music of the spheres all at once. \u201cYou don\u2019t tamper with Milton to be funny,\u201d our holy fool may attest, but for all its radical theology, Radi Os<\/em> is, in the end, a divine musical comedy.<\/p>\n

Listen carefully, and you\u2019ll hear a marvelously cracked piece of postmodern music playing behind the curtain of Johnson\u2019s literary erasure. At a party with his students one night\u2014so the story goes\u2014the poet first heard a recording of Baroque Variations<\/em>, by the composer Lukas Foss. At one point in the work, a xylophone spells out Johann Sebastian Bach<\/em> in Morse code. Elsewhere, a highly trained musician smashes a bottle with a hammer. Johnson\u2019s various enthusiasms must have lined up nicely that evening, because he embarked upon the \u201csolitary quest in the cloud chamber\u201d that would become Radi Os<\/em> the very next day. In the dedicatory note to his book, Johnson quotes Foss\u2019s liner notes for Variation I\u2014on a larghetto by Handel\u2014as a sort of key to his own work:<\/p>\n

\n

Groups of instruments play the Larghetto but keep submerging into inaudibility (rather than pausing). Handel\u2019s notes are always present but often inaudible. The inaudible moments leave holes in Handel\u2019s music (I composed the holes). The perforated Handel is played by different groups of the orchestra in three different keys at one point, in four different speeds at another.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Handel\u2019s larghetto, from the Concerto Grosso, op. 6, no. 12, may very well be the most beautiful melody the composer ever wrote. It\u2019s easy enough to find online, if you\u2019d like to hear the \u201calways present but often inaudible\u201d original music behind Foss\u2019s d\u00e9tourned<\/em> Variation I sometime. Then listen to the Foss, and you\u2019ll experience the otherworldly beauty of Handel under eclipse. It\u2019s hard not to hear broken radios searching for a classical music broadcast in this perforated larghetto\u2019s eerie harmonics and bursts of sonority. If you find Radi Os<\/em> slow going, try reading it as the libretto for a post-structuralist space opera\u2014lyrics erased by Johnson, score perforated by Foss.<\/p>\n

The wonder of variations\u2014in music, in poetry, in evolutionary biology, and elsewhere\u2014is how one variation begets another, though you never know what you\u2019ll beget. Perforating Paradise Lost<\/em>, Johnson produced a literary variation on Foss\u2019s musical variation on a Baroque artist who composed dozens of variations of his own\u2014including Hephaestus\u2019s favorite, \u201cThe Harmonious Blacksmith.\u201d To see how Radi Os<\/em> makes possible even further variations on itself, let\u2019s look at the original passage in the 1892 edition of Paradise Lost<\/em> on the page where Satan\u2019s shield first appears.<\/p>\n

\"\"

Image courtesy of the Ronald Johnson Collection, Kenneth Spencer Research Library, University of Kansas. Used with permission of the Literary Estate of Ronald Johnson.<\/p><\/div>\n

What if somebody other than Johnson\u2014say, a young woman in rural New England on a snowy night long ago\u2014were to compose her own holes in this dark material?<\/p>\n

\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 time<\/p>\n

Can<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 thunder<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Here<\/p>\n

Here\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 in my<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 unhappy mansion<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 but<\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 that voice<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Of<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 fire<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 scarce\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 ceased<\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 the<\/p>\n

Ethereal<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 artist<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 in her\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 globe<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Of<\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 marle\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 steps<\/p>\n

On\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0and<\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 on<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

It\u2019s hardly \u201cBecause I could not stop for Death,\u201d but you get the idea. There are innumerable poems encrypted in the \u201charmonious numbers\u201d of Paradise Lost<\/em>. I even hear echoes of the sadly underrated poet, Star Trek<\/em> aficionado, and Ronald Johnson enthusiast Srikanth Reddy in this literary cloud chamber.<\/p>\n

\n

The mind is<\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 a<\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 matter<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 my<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 friends<\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 of<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 voice<\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 the\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 edge<\/p>\n

Of\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 it<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 moving<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 like<\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 glass<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 in<\/p>\n

Rivers<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 but<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 burning<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

I could do this forever, and that\u2019s exactly the point. You could, too. I suspect that\u2019s why Johnson breaks off his own work at Book 4 of Paradise Lost<\/em>, leaving nearly seven thousand lines of pristine Miltonic pentameters for others to cross out someday. \u201cRadi Os<\/em> kind of wrote itself,\u201d said the author of this unfinished erasure. \u201cI think it ended when it needed to end, and I didn\u2019t need to add the rest.\u201d An open-ended variation on Milton\u2019s song, Radi Os<\/em> invites us to \u201cadd the rest.\u201d And why stop at Paradise Lost<\/em>, for that matter? Compose your own holes in any book\u2014Alice\u2019s Adventures in Wonderland<\/em>, the Constitution of the United States of America, The Unsignificant<\/em>\u2014and you\u2019ll unearth a manifold matrix of worlds within.<\/p>\n

A literary multiverse, Radi Os<\/em> is riddled with cosmological wormholes, theological rabbit holes, and typographical holes. From the \u201cO\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 tree,\u201d a slant rhyme for poetry<\/em> that opens the work, to the \u201cO for \/ The Apocalypse\u201d that trumpets the poem\u2019s closing revelations, Johnson makes us see the hole<\/em> in whole<\/em> and hear the hole<\/em> in holy<\/em>. There\u2019s a hole in wonder, too, though I\u2019d never tumbled through it until I came across the following page in Radi Os<\/em>:<\/p>\n

\"\"

Image courtesy of the Ronald Johnson Collection, Kenneth Spencer Research Library, University of Kansas. Used with permission of the Literary Estate of Ronald Johnson.<\/p><\/div>\n

The first time I read this passage, I had no idea what lay behind it. But that floating little phrase\u2014\u201cthe O \/ Of \/ wonder\u201d\u2014kept looping around in my head, so I dug up an old copy of Paradise Lost<\/em> to read the Miltonic original and was wonderstruck. Almost three thousand years ago, a blind Greek poet pictured the world on an ancient shield. Two and a half millennia later, the moon spied through an optic glass eclipsed Homer\u2019s world in a theological poem of Reformation England. In my own lifetime\u2014I was four, astronauts had set foot on the moon\u2019s surface only a few years earlier\u2014a little-known American poet erased Milton\u2019s spotty globe all the way down to a wondrous O<\/em>. World, moon, O<\/em>. The word for when things line up in this way is syzygy<\/em>. The microscopic linkage of chromosomes necessary for reproduction in our species is one example. An eclipse\u2014when three celestial bodies line up in astronomical space\u2014is another. The word syzygy<\/em> is itself a syzygy, which almost makes me believe in intelligent design as far as language is concerned. Read aloud its sequence of three identical vowels lined up in a row\u2014y<\/em>, y<\/em>, y<\/em>\u2014and you\u2019ll hear humankind grappling with the mystery of causation. Let\u2019s not overlook that linked chain of o<\/em>\u2019s in \u201cthe O \/ Of \/ wonder,\u201d either. It\u2019s a syzygy, too. Why, why, why? Oh, oh, oh. We all live that song.<\/p>\n

So many images flicker through this O<\/em> in Radi Os<\/em>\u2014a full moon, a ghostly shield, a hole in a page from a timeworn edition of Paradise Lost<\/em>\u2014but I always return to a mouth open in wonder. When we see golden acrobats turning handsprings on an ancient shield, or when the mountains of the moon first swim into focus through a telescope\u2019s eyepiece, we say \u201cO,\u201d hardly aware that our lips are assuming the shape of the signifier itself. The \u201cO\u201d of wonder, Johnson shows us, is the o<\/em> in wonder<\/em>. I can\u2019t think of any other word where our writing system and the morphology of human speech enter into such wondrous alignment. But the mouth forms an O in arousal, and in hunger, and in death\u2019s terminal rictus, too: \u201cThy mouth was open,\u201d George Herbert says to Death personified, \u201cbut thou couldst not sing.\u201d There\u2019s no such thing as pure or simple wonder. When thaumazein<\/em> forces our lips into an O, all those ancient drives\u2014from Eros to Thanatos<\/em>\u2014move through us as well. The art of poetry traditionally originates in this inexhaustible, sonorous \u201cO.\u201d O muse, O Lord, O my love, O late capitalism, O etcetera\u2014the O<\/em> that Johnson plucks out of wonder invokes endless poetic variation. With all due respect to Plato and Aristotle, philosophy isn\u2019t the only vocation that springs from thaumazein<\/em>. If you look closely at the O<\/em> of wonder, you\u2019ll see a poem beginning there, too.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Srikanth Reddy is the poetry editor of<\/em> The Paris Review. This lecture will appear in<\/em>\u00a0The Unsignificant: Three Talks on Poetry and Pictures, forthcoming from Wave Books in September.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u201cMaybe wonder, like the moon, has a dark side.\u201d <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2310,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[68569],"tags":[67827],"class_list":["post-167889","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-lectures","tag-featured"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nOn Wonder by Srikanth Reddy<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"June 25, 2024 \u2013 \u201cMaybe wonder, like the moon, has a dark side.\u201d\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2024\/06\/25\/on-wonder\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"On Wonder by Srikanth 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