Austen’s language is often biting, but it is also a relief from the loud vulgarity that passes for some commentary today. Perhaps that sounds old-fashioned, but there is peace to be found there, in the pacing, the restraint, the poetry and elegance that is a product of another time entirely. And of course, of Austen’s genius.
In the nineteenth century as well as today, photographic trickery trains viewers to be more careful consumers of visual media by teaching them how to break the rules themselves.
Nearly every time I drove, I thought I saw the woman I’d hit. She’d flash ahead of me, a face in the headlights. Or, if I didn’t see her, I’d imagine her suddenly stepping onto the road. On the dashboard, I noticed cuts in the vinyl from when her back had burst through my windshield. I avoided driving on the highway to work. I took Clairmont Road instead, the slower and, I hoped, safer route. Its four lanes run through leafy neighborhoods, winding past schools, grocery stores, drab strip malls. Still, driving left me feeling under siege, half-crazy about the dangers of this thing I did every day.
In the show Hoarders, it can feel like the goal is to fix everyone really quickly, by the end of each episode. But with her poems, Durbin doesn't want to resolve anything for the reader. She simply wants to stop and listen to whatever the people and their objects have to say.
You’re at a bus stop, wool hat
tugged down. Slush sprays