An image of rain crystallizing on glass.

A Moment That You Couldn’t Tell: Riding the Gradient of the Lyric Essay

I In his poem “Because You Asked About the Line Between Prose and Poetry,” Howard Nemerov writes: Sparrows were feeding in a freezing drizzleThat while you watched turned to pieces of snowRiding a gradient invisibleFrom silver aslant to random, white, and slow. There came a moment that you couldn’t tell.And then they clearly flew instead […]

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I In his poem “Because You Asked About the Line Between Prose and Poetry,” Howard Nemerov writes: Sparrows were feeding in a freezing drizzleThat while you watched turned to pieces of snowRiding a gradient invisibleFrom silver aslant to random, white, and slow. There came a moment that you couldn’t tell.And then they clearly flew instead