Sep 8, 2007


Sleep well, Madeline L'Engle

"Don't worry about Charles Wallace, Meg," her father had once told her. Meg remembered it very clearly because it was shortly before he went away. "There's nothing the matter with his mind. He just does things in his own way and in his own time."


I'm pretty sure A Wrinkle in Time is the first novel I ever read. And Charles Wallace was the first literary character I identified with strongly. We never forget the first time, as it were, and consequently many of the images from L'Engle's books pop up in my work from time to time:


REVISIONIST HISTORY SWEETHEART

A monolith of blue
goo
frozen to a molten
hill.

Lit handprints for
an old-style
breakdown.

Curlicued winds &
a brazen output.

Jellyfish women
in the border towns.

Slick bloodstone
in the breastbone,

a tesseract.

O please
let me be
with this sweet
surface.