[Lance Levens]

Maryann and Steve,

Candidly, I'm drawn to the majestic sound and the images like a seaman to a Siren. But he gives me the shivers with his soul spelunking. Dickinson's frisson, I suppose.

Steve's quote, for example:

Half of the fellow father as he doubles
His sea-sucked Adam in the hollow hulk,
Half of the fellow mother as she dabbles
Tomorrow's diver in her horny milk,
Bisected shadows on the thunder's bone
Bolt for the salt unborn.

It's brilliant. Look at the tangled, magnificent, unsettling cluster of images and thoughts here: The father in procreation creates his own Adam, everyman, who is sea-sucked, the waters of the womb are like the waters of the planet. (My mother would have objected to being labelled a hollow hulk.) The mother gives suck to their Adam who is a diver because he will enter the hollow hulk himself one day. Horny milk is rich. Consider the appearance of the nipple. And the milk is like a horn of plenty, cornucopia from the Latin cornus, horn.

Interestingly, in the couplet he drops the polysemy and uses unequivocally clear images--that don't, however, yield an unequivocally clear pattern. The "bisected shadows." Are the unborn doubles splitting because they fear what they sense is coming: birth?

Without your "doubles" note, Steve, I wouldn't have figured this much out. DT is not for the lazy folks.

An old paradigm comes to mind, one that was popular in Nitzche's day: : Apollo and Dionysus. DT is one of the Dionysians.