Fascicle 30

Vogler releases the tension trapped in Dickinson’s taut syntax by opening up her poems to the dizzying lyrical energy found often in the writing of Susan Howe. The product of such aeration is a circuitous maze of insistent doubt, in which, at every corner we encounter a familiar speaker looking for the exit. Scattered throughout the text are the disjointed parts of an intimate letter, mentions of a journey, a promise, a “Balmless Wound,” all of which give testament to a dynamic agnosticism. In the striking pastoral of the final poem, we are reminded of both the simplicity and the terrifying silence of faith, placed beside a speaker who requests “just a syllable” of affirmation.