Anderson, Jon - Anderson, Jon 1940–
Anderson, Jon 1940–
Anderson is an American poet. In Sepia is his third collection of poetry. (See also Contemporary Authors, Vols. 25-28, rev. ed.)
In Sepia has the severe virtue of possessing a central fable to which no poem (not even the Middle English pastiche about two dogs) is irrelevant. The fable might be summed up as follows. We begin, in youth, with the mesmerizing fear of death as the pure opposite to selfhood. But in "the middle years"—as vivid points stand out less from the general flow of time, as we no longer expect our lives to form patterns or stories leading to conclusive revelations, and yet longing remains, diffused into our sense of indefiniteness—our experience of life becomes curiously like our fantasy of death, "The same measure, or passing of time,/ Where we dissolve." Thus, in the poem I have been quoting from, "Stories," the desire to shape one's life into a story dissolves in the fascinating...
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