Abstract
The Art of Sinking Dan Coyle The art of sinking in poetry is knownto but a few. A quick run-throughwill not suffice. Consider the woman in lampshade tunic and Merry Widow hatsprinting to a life boat. She will not get it.Nor will the English Major from the Royal Dragoons, his epaulets askew and cockedhat a-kilter. He cannot tame the tumult.Only that large red man reading in a deck chair gets it, untroubledby the brouhaha, bent over his bookenthralled, as if he’d booked passage to an island in Wallacea—Sumba, Sumbawa,or Flora—where sunlit palms flare, beaksof cockatiels go click and clack, and the godly sun will warm him all the way down.Imagine him testing tropicaltropes on the frigid night air of the North Atlantic andonce satisfied, sinkinginto poetry. [End Page 109] Dan Coyle Washington, D. C. Copyright © 2023 Johns Hopkins University Press
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