Metaxy and Form, with a poem by Charles Wright

Charles Wright Littlefoot (2007)

This looks like your basic lyric: the opening of a ripe moment, the equivocations of desire, the dialectics of the erotic ladder, all ending in the equivocity of the self.

But it fulfills an ‘other’ promise: the erotics of the ‘same’ or rather the flip side of the dialectic. He cites the ‘unloved.’ His list concludes with the least of these. Whence Eros?

If the erotic dialectic collapses under the paradoxical question, where does the energy come from? Instead of dialectical climax, we have the ‘other’ value system, the ‘with’ or other side of metaxy. Meta, as Desmond points out repeatedly, means both with and beyond, thus splitting the dialectical atom. ‘This chirper lost in the loose leaves’ of the mix of the between (metaxu).

As dialectic ends with the no-end of frustrated Eros, the metaxy ends in the original energy of community—-not erotic fulfillment but agapeic communication. ‘It’ -— the nameless chirper—- reminds us of … us.

See God and the Between, p 291

Author: Tom D'Evelyn

Tom D'Evelyn is a private editor and writing tutor in Cranston RI and, thanks to the web, across the US and in the UK. He can be reached at tom.develyn@comcast.net. D'Evelyn has a PhD in Comparative Literature from UC Berkeley. Before retiring he held positions at The Christian Science Monitor, Harvard University Press, Boston University and Brown University. He ran a literary agency for ten years, publishing books by Leonard Nathan and Arthur Quinn, among others. Before moving to Portland OR he was managing editor at Single Island Press, Portsmouth NH. He blogs at http://tdevelyn.com and other sites. View all posts by Tom D'Evelyn