On the Line: Two Poems and a Film

Some favorite recent sentences

"The spaces
between
things began
speaking. So it was

I understood I
was now
to remain
silent."

That is the opening of a poem, “Upon the Furthest Slope You Know,” by Jorie Graham in a recent issue of the London Review of Books. Later she says of something “almost” said by the wind: “Listen to it / when it speaks to you – it is / the next world.”

. . .

"Almost every artistic direction and decision was guided by the sound. The construction of the shot was not so much the point of view of where he fell but where the music is looking from."

That is Justine Triet, director of the film, Anatomy of a Fallspeaking to the LA Times of the influence of a steel band cover of a 50 Cent song on her movie. 

. . .

"... I felt most  
myself when I was least loved. Cast into  
the night like a half-formed sound, I was falling  
toward sleep when I heard a faint  
rustling as if it were calling from a distant world, 
near enough to startle me awake."

That is from “Shadow Study,” a poem by Jennifer S. Cheng published by The Atlantic.

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