[close reading] The question of what the poem's about becomes mapped into the question of whether the poem subsumes the mountain or the mountain the poem. If the poem is about the mountain, it, the poem, is still master. But if the poem can't manage to capture and communicate the mountain, then it isn't: it's about its own defeat as the mountain pierces the infinite sky. Comparison, again, to DIckinson's "sky" in "The Brain is wider than the Sky." Quick mention of the difference, in
[close reading] The question of what the poem's about becomes mapped into the question of whether the poem subsumes the mountain or the mountain the poem. If the poem is about the mountain, it, the poem, is still master. But if the poem can't manage to capture and communicate the mountain, then it isn't: it's about its own defeat as the mountain pierces the infinite sky. Comparison, again, to DIckinson's "sky" in "The Brain is wider than the Sky." Quick mention of the difference, in that poem of syllable and sound. God would be just a sound, the natural world, but the difference the brain might make in turning sound into syllable is the difference that imputing meaning makes. If the mind imputes meaning, then the home of meaning is in the mind.
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