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Annotated by:
- Aull, Felice
- Date of entry: Nov-11-2002
Summary
This poem is in memory of poet, John Logan (1923-1987), who, it is surmised, killed himself by jumping off a building. The speaker of the poem imagines what might have been troubling Logan, who had been disabled by strokes.
Miscellaneous
First published: 1994
Primary Source
Each Thing We Know Is Changed Because We Know It, and Other Poems
Publisher
Ahsahta Press of Boise State University
Place Published
Boise, Idaho
Edition
1996
Commentary
Hearle, a poet, understands what it must be like for a poet--who deals in words, in meaning--to lose "words and memory," "stunned by meanings / [his lips] could not convey." In addition, Hearle implies, Logan's background may have pre-disposed him to suicidal depression: "such loneliness--// his mother, dead / in childbirth . . . " In Hearle's conception, Logan embraced death: "he saw the earth approaching / and kissed it // uncontrollably." The final word, standing by itself, "uncontrollably," suggests inevitability, forces over which there was no control.