There's more than enough here, for all your (well-founded) worries about form. It seems like capacious expanse cohering around a capacious voice does legitimately make for the best use of the email form of Substack, if not the web-based version. That said, I'm also rooting for your physical book(s) as the best, stubborn, and continuing form for literature.
Re: your discourse on poetry corresponding with science but then gesturing beyond it — have you read any Annie Dillard? She descends pretty self-consciously from Thoreau, and her early poetry led her to some blindingly good essays on nature, reality, scientific advances, and other gigantic subjects. "Pilgrim at Tinker's Creek" (1974) was my entry way, but she followed it with searing work on theodicy and reality in "Holy the Firm." She didn't suffer our contemporary graceless solipsism.
There's more than enough here, for all your (well-founded) worries about form. It seems like capacious expanse cohering around a capacious voice does legitimately make for the best use of the email form of Substack, if not the web-based version. That said, I'm also rooting for your physical book(s) as the best, stubborn, and continuing form for literature.
Re: your discourse on poetry corresponding with science but then gesturing beyond it — have you read any Annie Dillard? She descends pretty self-consciously from Thoreau, and her early poetry led her to some blindingly good essays on nature, reality, scientific advances, and other gigantic subjects. "Pilgrim at Tinker's Creek" (1974) was my entry way, but she followed it with searing work on theodicy and reality in "Holy the Firm." She didn't suffer our contemporary graceless solipsism.
Kind words, Kevin. I've heard of, but not read, Annie Dillard. That's a great recommendation, I'll have to look into some of her work.
I hope it has more of what you're interested in reading and writing; she's definitely becoming an indispensable touchstone for what I want to do.
Lots to unpack here, and it's very well written. I'm going to have to do a deep dive later. Good shit my dude.
New subscriber.
Thank you so much, man! Means a lot.