ABSTRACT
In The Life of Poetry, Muriel Rukeyser explores the deep connections between the form of a poem and the forms of Gaia. Any theory of poetic form must locate that theory of form in the happenings of Gaia, which is its own whorl within the energies of the cosmos. Placing Sound as the primary agent and the constant concerning the form and energy of a poem does not discount the ways in which written letters hum with a vibrational energy. Walt Whitman’s reflection on form and the atom, also mentioned earlier, extends into other poems where he further expands his elemental imagination. The words in the corners recur within the “actual” poem’s stanzas—but as one lingers in the poem, they may think that the four corner words, through their deviancy, are what actually make the poem. The protean energy that brings forth the morphology of form—that turning edge of life—includes the hum of electrons stirring, cells stirring, and poems stirring.
